Award-Winning Films For A Sustainable Future

As developers slowly squeeze every ounce of profit they can out of the Florida landscape, animals like the gopher tortoise and more than 365 creatures that rely on them are being driven to extinction. Developers have infiltrated every level of government in Florida including the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, an organization supposedly dedicated to protecting Florida's wildlife and wild places. Protections for the tortoise and other species is slowly being chipped away. But there's still hope that we can save this species, and ultimately, ourselves. This film was created on a budget of only $5,000 and using 100% volunteer work, and is a story from told from the collective hearts of thousands of people who care about gopher tortoises and supported the film throughout the production process.

As the Little Conemaugh River winds through the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, it forms the backbone of a region with a legacy of industrial might. And like a scribe, the river carries the weight of that history - mile after mile devoid of life, poisoned by toxic pollution from countless abandoned coal mines. Generations of residents and neighbors have turned their back on the river, believing the damage to be irreversible and scolding their children for playing in its orange waters. But a decade-long effort from a coalition of local groups has begun to reveal a different future for the Little Conemaugh and for other rivers in Pennsylvania and beyond that were written off as a casualty of the coal industry. A River Reborn tells the story of the rebirth of the Little Conemaugh, and what it says about our ability to fix what might have been lost forever.

Inspired by Herman Melville's epic tale, "Moby-Dick or The Whale", a late-blooming singer/songwriter and former toy designer, Jen Long, acts on a startling vision and commissions the design and build of a remarkable custom electric guitar. It's body is "The Whale" itself as it snags the mad Captain Ahab in the tangled ropes of his own obsession, and prepares to launch a boat of his whalers to their doom. The entire guitar reinterprets Melville's tale as an Anthropocene climate change warning, with the whale representing the seas and storms of climate change arising on this "third day" of late stage capitalism. Hundreds of guitarists, including J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., and Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, have played and signed this "Instrument of Change" to amplify the alarm to turn our ship of over-production and over-consumption around while there is still time. As the embroidered strap featuring Starbuck's last words implores: "oh! Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist."

Stopping the next pandemic is a new challenge to the most prominent scientists. Their field studies around the world are showing that our health as humans depends on animal and environmental health. Diseases that occur in the remotest places are now our concern. We live in a connected world. We will have to preserve the environment to prevent future pandemics.