Earth Month

A Fierce Green Fire is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement - grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years from conservation to climate change. From halting dams in the Grand Canyon to battling 20,000 tons of toxic waste at Love Canal; from Greenpeace saving the whales to Chico Mendes and the rubbertappers saving the Amazon; from climate change to the promise of transforming our civilization... the film tells vivid stories about people fighting - and succeeding - against enormous odds.

A decade after An Inconvenient Truth brought the climate crisis into the heart of popular culture, comes the riveting and rousing follow-up that shows just how close we are to a real energy revolution. Former Vice President Al Gore continues his tireless fight, traveling around the world training an army of climate champions and influencing international climate policy. Cameras follow him behind the scenes as he pursues the idea that while the stakes have never been higher, the perils of climate change can be overcome with human ingenuity and passion.

Moving from summer 2016, when demonstrations over the Dakota Access Pipeline's demolishing of sacred Native burial grounds began, to the current and disheartening pipeline status, AWAKE, A Dream from Standing Rock is a powerful visual poem in three parts that uncovers complex hidden truths with simplicity. The film is a collaboration between indigenous filmmakers: Director Myron Dewey and Executive Producer Doug Good Feather; and environmental Oscar-nominated filmmakers Josh Fox and James Spione.

An eye-opening documentary that focuses on many never-before-seen solutions designed to slow down our escalating environmental crisis, Ice on Fire goes beyond the current climate change narrative and offers hope that we can actually stave off the worst effects of global warming. Narrated by producer and Oscar®-winner Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Leila Conners, who first collaborated with DiCaprio eleven years ago on The 11th Hour, the feature-length documentary focuses on cutting-edge research behind today’s climate science – and the innovations aimed at reducing carbon in the atmosphere, which could pave the way for a reduction in the global temperature rises and a benefit to the planet’s life systems. With sweeping cinematography of a world worth saving, Ice on Fire crossing the globe, from Norway to Alaska, Iceland to Colorado, Switzerland to Costa Rica to Connecticut to highlight the firsthand accounts of people at the forefront of the climate crisis, with insights from scientists, farmers, innovators and others, finding that while the risks and urgency may be higher than ever today, there are also greater opportunities for innovative solutions, offering a realistic but hopeful perspective on a key global issue that demands our attention.

Beginning at origins in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, Psychohydrography tracks the flow of water, step-by-step, through Owens Valley, aqueducts, and concrete troughs in the city of Los Angeles, to Long Beach delta and the Pacific Ocean. Constructed from tens of thousands of still images and their neighboring sounds, the film is also a journey through a natural and industrial topography of striking conflicts and contradictions. In its contemplation of the natural process of an essential element of life, and the banal, unseen system that supplies Los Angeles its water, Psychohydrography is a meditation on our dependence on and alienation from the natural world.

Taking Root tells the dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy--a movement for which this charismatic woman became an iconic inspiration.

This wide-ranging and contemplative documentary explores our deep-seated connection to birds and warns that the uncertain fate of songbirds might mirror our own. Moving from the northern reaches of the boreal forest to the base of Mount Ararat in Turkey to the streets of New York, we come face-to-face with a remarkable variety of human-made perils that have devastated thrushes, warblers, orioles, grosbeaks and many others. In ancient times humans looked to the flight and songs of birds to protect the future. Today once again, birds have something to tell us.

This is a story about clothing. It's about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. The True Cost is a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing?

For 20 years, notorious activists the Yes Men (Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum) have staged outrageous hoaxes to hijack public dialogue about the issues of the day. In their third cinematic outing (after The Yes Men and The Yes Men Fix the World), they're well into their 40s, and mid-life crises are threatening to drive them out of activism forever - even as they prepare to take on the biggest challenge yet: climate change.

Two places at the edge of our planet are making headlines due to climate change: Thule, Greenland, because of record ice melts there; and Tuvalu, because this remote Pacific Island nation is one of the first countries on the verge of sinking as a result of rising sea levels. Whereas for us the warming of the planet occurs almost solely in the media, it is changing the entire existence for the inhabitants of the Thule and Tuvalu. This film portrays how they are forced to abandon their traditional way of life as they move towards an unknown future.

Narrated by Emma Thompson, this award-winning documentary looks at where we are going to find our oil and gas today - to the ends of the earth. From a river conservationist in Utah who protects the Colorado River from oil shale projects, to an Inuit mayor in the high Arctic who worries that seismic tests affect the animals Inuit people depend on, To The Ends of the Earth gives voice to those who not only denounce the rise of extreme energy, but also envision a new world that is taking shape in its stead: a future beyond the resource pyramid, a post-growth economy.

Filmed over nearly three years, Waste Land follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" -- or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz's initial objective was to "paint" the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives.