Sunday Films

http://www.amazoniamovie.com/Trailer/index.html In the eat-or-be-eaten world of the Amazon Rainforest, a little treefrog named Bounce sets out on a normal day to find a meal but quickly learns that the proverbial hunter becomes the hunted. Unable to catch his meal, Bounce is punished relentlessly by his prey to the breaking point until his chance encounter with [...]

As clearcutting continues to ravage California’s coastal redwood region, Farmer, an environmental activist, decides to tree sit to defend the McKay Tract, near Eureka. AMONG GIANTS begins three years into the McKay tree-sit. Stuck on his tiny platform a hundred feet up in the ancient redwood canopy, Farmer must battle the elements and avoid isolation [...]

In a world of climate change and environmental catastrophies, two sisters Anna and Emma and their companions, the California Condors, stand out as a beacon of hope. Together with their father, Chris Parish, the director of the Peregrine Fund at Vermillion Cliffs, and their mother, Ellen Parish, teacher and leader for the environmental organization Roots [...]

The Beaver Creek Episodes are funny stop motion animation shorts featuring Twigs the beaver and Drake the duck. Each episode blends witty cartoon antics of natural beaver activities, which casts a good light on nature’s keystone species. In Episode Four Twigs and Drake have fun in the snow, as well as realize the true meaning [...]

Back in her hometown, a young entomologist investigating the death of her dad’s honey bees stumbles upon racial prejudices, lies and old family feuds. “BEE” is both a mystery and a love story: Many documentaries have been done about the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), but very few fiction-based films. I was interested in creating a [...]

http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi462462489/ This 75 minute documentary celebrates the beauty, drama and sweeping history of California State Parks, the most magnificent and diverse collection of state parks in the nation.The story of California State Parks holds the key moments within the history of conservation in America. The plot intersects with many important victories that saved much of [...]

  The City Dark is a feature documentary about light pollution and the disappearing night sky. After moving to New York City from rural Maine, filmmaker Ian Cheney asks a simple question, “Do we need the stars?” Exploring the threat of killer asteroids in Hawaii, tracking hatching turtles along the Florida coast, and rescuing injured [...]

With tremendous foresight and inspirational determination of active community members and local social and environmental organizations, West African Liberia has managed to conserve an abundance of its natural environment. After two decades of civil war, Liberia is still one of the richest countries in natural resources, yet its people remain some of the poorest in [...]

The state of California is closing a quarter of its 268 state parks due to budget cuts. This is the first time in history the state has had to close its parks. The First 70 follows the journey of three young filmmakers traveling to each of the 70 parks marked for closure. Covering thousands of [...]

Food Stamped follows nutritionist Shira Potash and her documentary filmmaker husband, Yoav, as they attempt to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet on a food stamp budget. Shira teaches healthy cooking classes to elementary students in low-income neighborhoods, most of whom are eligible for food stamps. In an attempt to walk a mile in their shoes, [...]

What if global hunger, poverty and disease could be solved with the natural and abundant resources already at our finger tips? From the Mara Soil transports you to a community in rural Tanzania trying to answer this question with a novel approach to solving humanity’s greatest challenges with simple, natural and affordable solutions. This inspiring [...]

Aldo Leopold is considered the most important conservationist of the 20th century because his ideas are so relevant to the environmental issues of our time. He is the father of the national wilderness system, wildlife management and the science of ecological restoration. His classic book A Sand County Almanac still inspires us to see the [...]

It’s not just ‘Old MacDonald’ on the farm anymore. Across the U.S. there’s a growing movement of educated young people leaving the cities to take up an agrarian life. Armed with college degrees, some are unable to find jobs in the current economic slump. Fed up with corporate America and its influence on a broken [...]

Adapted from the poem by Brian Christian (author, THE MOST HUMAN HUMAN), HELIOTROPES offers a glance at how certain patterns repeat themselves at different levels of nature, whether we know it or not. Sunflower seeds and petals are known to follow the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical formula that makes their structure maximally efficient–but they don’t [...]

1899; one of the most famous native New Zealand birds, the Huia, is nearing extinction. Famed Ornithologist Sir Walter Buller pursues the huia for his book, his collection, and for Science – but when presented with an opportunity to save the species, his actions are unexpected – and highly controversial. Based on a true story.

The world’s nuclear power plants have generated an estimated 300,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste that must be safely stored for 100,000 years or more. Every year, they generate another 12,000 metric tons of high-level waste. Into Eternity is the first feature documentary to explore the mind-boggling scientific and philosophical questions long-term nuclear waste storage [...]

Journey of the Universe is a dramatic and expansive film that reimagines the universe story and reframes the human connection to the cosmos. Created by a renowned team of scientists, scholars, and award-winning filmmakers, it is beautifully filmed in HD on the Greek island of Samos, the birthplace of Pythagoras. Journey is hosted by evolutionary [...]

The world of environmental direct action has remained a secretive one, until now. Emily James spent over a year embedded in activist groups such as Climate Camp and Plane Stupid to document their clandestine activities. With unprecedented access, Just do It takes you on an astonishing journey behind the scenes of a community of people [...]

This is the parallel journey of two characters: one a young woman discouraged at her future as a suburban housewife, the other a river — one beautiful and teeming with wildlife — now a hopeless, toxic sludge pit. Chronicling an important episode in U.S. environmental history, this inspirational story examines the human side of acclaimed [...]

What does a beauty pageant in Suva, Fiji have to do with climate change? Quite a lot, as it turns out. ‘Miss South Pacific: Beauty and the Sea’ is a short documentary film about the 2009-2010 Miss South Pacific Pageant that brought contestants, or Queens, from all the major Pacific Island Nations to compete in [...]

MOTHER NATURE’S CHILD calls us to consider the future of that which we hold most dear: the health and well-being of our children. Visually rich, inflected with humor and the unexpected, the film examines the benefits of unstructured outdoor play, risk-taking, urban connection with nature, healthy rites of passage, the use of technology, and what [...]

My father, who art in nature, is a documentary film by Alden Olmsted, son of California naturalist and John Muir follower John Olmsted. John left the family when Alden was very young to preserve thousands of acres of California parks from Mendocino to Lake Tahoe – including, among others, Jug Handle State Reserve, Goat Mountain, [...]

The Naked Option reveals the inspiring story of an organized group of Nigerian women who use the threat of stripping naked in public, a serious cultural taboo, in their deadly struggle to hold the oil companies accountable to the communities in which they operate. The women, at the risk of being raped, beaten or killed, [...]

The Next, Best West shows how our interpretation of progress has shaped the singular landscape of the American West, and through three success stories from around the region, how a new understanding of progress may be our best hope for a bright and healthy future. The West is a place of pure beauty that has [...]

Over the past 200 years human beings have poured more than two trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As ‘The Changing Sea’ illustrates, carbon dioxide isn’t just changing the climate on land, it’s transforming the ocean in ways that haven’t been seen for millions of years. Is mass extinction the inevitable fate [...]

Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang have been collecting plastic debris off one beach in Northern California for over ten years. Each piece of plastic Richard and Judith pick up comes back to their house, where it gets cleaned, categorized and stored before being used for their art. The couple make sculptures, prints, jewelry and [...]

THIS LAND IS … WHOSE LAND? Pedal-Driven delves into the escalating conflict between mountain bikers hungry to ride and the federal land managers charged with protecting the public lands that belong to us all. Is there room for for mountain bikers in the American landscape or should they be banished?

“Nature is the most beautiful thing… There’s a universal energy. We should protect nature, because we are nature. I imagine the world as a playground.” Bet you didn’t think those words would come from a 9-year-old, Dylan Brophy, who freestyles the narration for Seth Warren’s new award-winning film, Playgrounds Re-imagined. From the beauty and rawness [...]

The cornfield – just an area for producing food … or a land full of secrets? In the western industrial nations cornfields and woods take up the greatest proportion of rural land. But how much natural life dwells in a cornfield? Why are some inhabitants harmful and others useful and what do the colourful flowers [...]

Portrait of a Winemaker: John Williams of Frog’s Leap takes a look at this pioneering Napa, California winemaker and his dry farming techniques which increase his soil’s fertility and capacity for water retention, as well as produce more flavorful wines. Water scarcity is one of the major issues facing the world today and this farming [...]

The bald eagle was once an important avian predator in the Channel Islands, a group of islands just off the coast of Southern California. Then in the early 60¹s the bald eagles disappeared due to egg collecting, hunting, and DDT contamination. This short film chronicles how a dedicated team of biologists and their partners has [...]

During the 2009 Isles of Scilly Earth Summit, Nice and Serious produced a short documentary to demonstrate how real people from Island Nations are being directly effected by the impacts of climate change. This short film steps away from the conventional scientific look at the impacts of climate change and instead, showcases a real, emotional [...]

In the artificial landscape that is Los Angeles, where even palm trees are imported, nothing epitomizes man’s short-sighted efforts to reshape the face of the earth more than the LA River: modified beyond recognition, its flow tapped before it even reached the surface, the river was used, abused and essentially forgotten. But when an unassuming [...]

‘Roots & Hollers’ takes you deep inside the world of wild American ginseng. The legendary root has linked Asia to the Appalachian wilderness for centuries. Considered a cure-all, wild American roots sell for thousands of dollars in Asian markets. The film follows two budding businessmen, Jeremy Tackett and Terry Cable, as they try their luck [...]

If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children. The U.S. Government knew this in the 19th century when it forced Native American children into government boarding schools. Today, volunteers build schools in traditional societies around the world, convinced [...]

Deep canyons with steep, spring fed creeks, make White Salmon, Washington a paddling paradise. This Autumn we caught up with White Salmon local Kate Wagner during a soul-session outside of her hometown.

As the snow melts and makes it way to the ocean, Jesse Murphy becomes reinvigorated by the river.

Second Nature: The Biomimicry Evolution explores biomimicry, the science of emulating nature’s best ideas to solve human problems. Set in South Africa, the film follows Time magazine “Hero of the Environment” Janine Benyus as she illustrates how organisms in nature can teach us to be more sustainable engineers, chemists, architects, and business leaders. After 3.8 [...]

Sekem Vision highlights a poignant example of a community that sprang from the soil of modern Egypt. Thirty years ago, after studying chemistry and medicine in Austria, Professor Ibrahim Abouleish turned 70 hectares of desert sand outside of Cairo into Sekem, a flourishing Biodynamic farm, thriving business, active educational center and wholesome cultural community.

Cory Mann is a quirky Tlingit businessman hustling to make a dollar in Juneau Alaska. He gets hungry for smoked salmon, nostalgic for his childhood, and decides to spend a summer smoking fish at his family’s traditional fish camp. By turns tragic, bizarre, or just plain ridiculous, Smokin’ Fish, tells the story of one man’s [...]

Narrated by Chevy Chase, this tragic yet hopeful documentary tells the story of a small group of Island Atolls that are disappearing because of sea rise. The people who live there did not understand what was to soon be their ultimate fate. Steve Goodall came across them on his travels and when he told them [...]

A Staycation Surfari Epic on Zero Dollars… Making their own boards, bamboo rickshaws, solar cookers, and hobo stoves, surfers Ryan Burch and Cyrus Sutton set off on a thirty mile, eight day walk through San Diego, CA. But what begins as a guide to taking a minimalist surfing journey, quickly becomes an examination of freedom [...]

“Stories from the Gulf” is a powerful half hour documentary about the impact on gulf residents of the largest oil spill in American history. Narrated by Robert Redford, the movie is based on audio interviews produced by NRDC and Bridge the Gulf, recorded by StoryCorps, and stunning original documentary photography. The BP oil disaster contaminated [...]

The United States isn’t broke; we’re the richest country on the planet, and a country where the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn’t working. But [...]

SUMMER PASTURE is a feature-length documentary that chronicles one summer with a young family amidst a period of great uncertainty. Locho, his wife Yama, and their infant daughter, nicknamed Jiatomah (‘pale chubby girl’), spend the summer months in eastern Tibet’s Zachukha grasslands, an area known as Wu-Zui or ’5-Most,’ – the highest, coldest, poorest, largest, [...]

Follow climbers Mark Synnott, Alex Honnold and James Pearson as they travel across the roadless, windswept deserts of northeastern Chad. Basing their expedition on nothing more than a few photographs and rumors of a promised land with countless unclimbed sandstone towers, Mark’s insatiable thirst for adventure and first ascents leads the small crew deep into [...]

In Communist Czechoslovakia, it wasn’t so difficult to find a sense of freedom. All you needed was a backpack, a guitar, and a place to sleep under the stars. That has always been the escape strategy of the Czech tramps, outdoorsmen and women who hike, camp, canoe and ride the rails. Inspired by the American [...]

From a young age, Steve McGreevy was fascinated by the natural world and by amateur radio. When he discovered that nature produced its own radio signals, he began a quest to capture these sounds – a quest that has taken him to the most remote parts of the continent. Sometimes called the ‘Music of the [...]

  WE STILL LIVE HERE (Âs Nutayuneân) tells a remarkable story of cultural revival by the Wampanoag of Southeastern Massachusetts. Their ancestors ensured the survival of the first English settlers in America, and lived to regret it. Now they are bringing their language home again. The story begins in 1994 when Jessie Little Doe, an [...]

One man’s obsession to do his part for the environment using weed-eating goats to control noxious invaders in the Rocky Mountains. A profile on Mark Harbaugh, Patagonia fly fishing rep and goat rancher.

Set in the Scottish Highlands, ‘Where The Wild Things Were’ explores the history of deforestation and its effect on today’s remaining Caledonian pine forests. Traveling with several species the film explores behaviours that are now considered essential for the regeneration of Scotland’s ancient Caledonian pine forests. ‘What a future that might be the great Caledonia [...]

“White Water, Black Gold’ follows David Lavallee on his three year journey across western Canada in search of the truth about the impact of the world’s thirstiest oil industry. This is a journey of jarring contrasts, from the pristine mountain icefields that are the source of this industry’s water, to the Tar Sands tailings ponds. [...]

For Fred, a health worker in Zambia, the bicycle is a means of reaching twice as many patients. For Bharati, a teenager in India, it provides access to education. For Mirriam, a disabled Ghanaian woman, working on bicycles is an escape from the stigma attached to disabled people in her community. For Carlos, a farmer [...]

Journeying to an unexplored granite canyon on the border of China and Mongolia, Collins finds not only adventure with friends and the local nomads, but a moment of reflection. From that moment comes a letter home to his four year old son. This letter becomes the script for a film, as we see an intimate [...]

Conservation advocates Rick Rutz and Shawn Cantrell have been working for 27 years to make the Elwha River dam removal project a reality.   On a rafting trip down the Elwha, they tell the story of taking the concept from “crazy idea” to landmark victory.

Technology can be addictive. In a tribute to Allen Ginsberg’s classic 1956 poem, we created a short film lampooning the addictions of our generation.

In this David and Goliath story for the 21st century, a group of proud Scottish homeowners take on a celebrity tycoon. At stake is one of Britain’s very last stretches of wilderness. The billionaire property developer Donald Trump has bought up hundreds of acres on the northeast coast of Scotland, best known to movie-lovers as [...]