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Didn’t get a chance to catchTom Shadyac’s I AM at last year’s festival? Well, you’re in luck: the film is now screening in cities across the U.S. and coming to more over the next couple of months. We’ve pulled a sampling of some of the places it’s currently screening, but for a full list you can click here.
- Portland – Regal Fox Tower 10
- Seattle – Landmark Varsity
- Berkeley – Landmark Shattuck
- San Diego – The Gaslamp
- New York – Regal Union Square
- Santa Monica – Laemmle 4-Plex
- Pasadena - Laemmle Playhouse 7
- San Jose – Camera Cinemas 12
- Washington D.C. – Landmark E Street
Flowing across stark, dazzling tundra landscapes on Russia’s remote Kamchatka Peninsula, a handful of rivers are home to Asia’s only population of steelhead trout. A group of scientists and flyfishers follow their passions beyond the edge, in order to encounter, understand and protect this magnificent silver fish.
Thanks to the Felt Soul Media crew for bringing this to our attention. A great look into the fish and rivers of Kamchatka from Eastern Rises star Ryan Peterson.
Mountainfilm friend Trevor Frost is up for a cool grant from National Geographic in their Expedition Granted contest. His focus? “Paper Parks” — National Parks that have little to no on-the-ground support and instead of protecting the wild places and animals that they are intended for, are merely lines drawn on a map.
From Elephant Journal:
More than 100,000 nature reserves or parks exist across the globe today to protect the world’s most beautiful places and important wildlife. Many assume that these parks ensure the protection of wildlife and habitats, but reports from the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimate that up to 70% of the world’s parks are failing to do their job — these parks have come to be known as “paper parks”. With little to no on-the-ground protection, funding for park rangers or even signs to outline park borders, these parks are literally just lines drawn on a map. In Asia, and in particular Indonesia, the problem is critical — the illegal wildlife trade is rampant and rates of deforestation are the highest in the world.
Trevor will compete for funding to launch an expedition to Asia to stop poaching and deforestation in Asia.
VOTE FOR TREVOR HERE.
We encourage you to vote for Trevor. You can vote once a day all the way through April 6.
To learn more, Trevor has a great Q&A over on Mongabay that’s worth reading if you get a chance.
Rick Hodes, whose work in Ethiopia helping children with severe spinal deformities was documented in Making the Crooked Straight which showed at Mountainfilm 2009, sent us a message today with a call to action.
Right now 30 kids in Ghana undergoing spine surgery by Dr. Boachie’s FOCOS team. We’re not fully funded, and greatly appreciate contributions – from small gifts to full sponsorships of $13,000 per child.
He sent us descriptions of all 30 children. Here are a select few:
Alemneh Bekele is a 9 year old from 100 miles north of Addis Ababa. He speaks Oromo and Amharic, and is trying to learn English. He lives with his dad, a farmer and his mom, a housewife, in a mud home. His back started deforming at age 2. Treatment for TB did not stop the deformity. He loves playing soccer and volleyball. He wants to teach Oromo language. He has TB of the spine and has lost 66% of his lung function.
Ebise Tariku is a 12 year old from Wellega, 400 miles south of Addis Ababa. Her dad died 5 years ago. Her mom is a day laborer. She lives with her brother and sister and mom in a 1 room mud hut. A local latrine is used by 18 families. They purchase water from neighbors. She is in 5th grade, and ranks among the top third of her class. She loves helping her relatives with chores, and she wants to be a doctor. Her mom took her to several doctors who said there is no treatment. However a person in the waiting room referred her to us. She has severe scoliosis and underlying neurofibromatosis.
Yetnayet Girma is a 13 year old girl living with her parents in a 1-room mud house. The community toilet is outside. Her dad is a day laborer, her mom sells groceries on the street. She is in 7th grade and ranks in the top 1/3 of her class. She has a severe scoliosis and has lost 60% of her lung function. A stranger in the street noticed her bad back and referred them to our spine program. Her goal is to become a doctor.
Read a description over every child up for surgery here. They are all touching and inspiring stories.
Click here to donate. Donations are tax-deductible and 100% of proceeds go towards Hodes’ work in Ethiopia.
You can catch Rick’s work on HBO, which is running Making the Crooked Straight on OnDemand.
After the success of his Midway photos, Chris Jordan is moving into a new phase of his breathtaking and emotional documentation of the heart of the Pacific. Bringing his photos to life, Jordan and his team are currently working on the production of the feature film “Midway.”
From Midway Journey:
Following Chris Jordan’s expeditions to Midway and the lifecycle of the Albatross, “Midway” is more than just a documentary or a film about wildlife at risk. “Midway” brings us an opportunity for us to look at our world in close-up, to see how our lives are impacting the planet, and to find new approaches to moving forward.
In this trailer, Jordan reminds us of the power that some of the disheartening occurrences on the island have on us, as well as the juxtaposition of the environmental destruction with the innate beauty of this remote area. As Jordan puts it, the team is “slowly moving from fully into the tragedy and beginning to turn toward beauty as a way of holding those two things together.”
For the past six years, Aaron Huey has been documenting the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. His new project seeks to take that work and turn it into a grassroots information campaign, the Pine Ridge Billboard Project.
The grim statistics on Native Reservations today are the equivalent to that of a 3rd world country, revealing the legacy of colonization and treaty violations. Unemployment on the Reservation fluctuates between 80-90%. Many are homeless, and those with homes are packed into rotting buildings with up to 5 families. More than 90% of the population lives below the federal poverty line. The life expectancy for men is 47 years old – roughly the same as Afghanistan and Somalia.
More than any project I have done in my career, the ever-evolving Pine Ridge project gives voice to social injustice and a forgotten history. I want my work to empower the Lakota and other tribes who fight for recognition of the past in order to help give them a chance to move forward.
As Huey points out, he hopes that this project will “illuminate a hidden history and empower a community.” To do so, he is teaming up with artists Ernesto Yerena and Shepard Fairey to turn his photos into powerful illustrations. The work will be showcased on billboards across the country and through an informative website, honorthetreaties.org.
Learn more about the Pine Ridge Billboard Project and support it by clicking here.
Our presenting sponsor, Eddie Bauer, in conjunction with PlayNetwork, announced their new Emerging Artists Program Thursday, with their first show this weekend at the South By Southwest Film Festival. he showcase will feature Gustavo Galindo, Andy Grammer, Kevin Hammond, Washington, Gilbere Forte, Electric Touch, Free Sol and alternative Dutch-American singer-songwriter Laura Jansen.
The Emerging Artist Program will continue presenting live events, including at this year’s Mountainfilm.
More on the new initiative here.
An open letter to Journalists on the Comparison of GASLAND to Nazi Propaganda by a member of the Corbett Administration.
By Josh Fox / GASLAND
March 16, 2011
This week, Teddy Borawski, the chief oil and gas geologist for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and a member of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s administration, serving in an official capacity, and on the record, compared my Sundance award-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary film GASLAND to Nazi propaganda stating “Goebbels would be proud.” The slander was the latest in a series of smears and misinformation about the film and character attacks on me.
This kind of hateful speech shows a contempt for history, for truth, for science and sets a dangerous precedent in our state’s government. Such slanderous mudslinging has no place in any rational or adult debate on ANY topic, let alone the most important issue facing the state in decades – natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.
When one speaks violence, he degrades himself and his fellow man. When that person represents the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he violates the fabric of our civic trust, delegitimizes the government he represents and opens the door to madness. The Corbett administration has thrown the dialogue on Marcellus drilling into the gutter and it is it up to the Corbett administration to get it out.
I made the film GASLAND out of a geniune care and love for the state of Pennsylvania. The film was designed to bring to light something that we were by and large overlooking — the extreme harm and danger of Fracking for Natural Gas, as it was taking place across the nation. To make the film, myself and a dedicated team of five people were working for no pay, day and night, without a major media company behind the film and without any assurances that anyone would see the film outside of the Delaware River basin.
According to Reuters, Japan’s multiple disasters are estimated to exceed $170 billion. In the wake of disaster, continued global support is paramount. So what can you do to help? Here is a list of five different ways.
1. Support Organizations on the ground
Here a few of the organizations doing work on the ground that could use your support
- The United Nations Foundation
- Doctors Without Borders – The international organization has already sent an 11-person team to Japan. More personnel staff are standing by in Japan and other countries to increase assistance.
- Habitat for Humanity -Habitat for Humanity has committed to helping with cleanup and rebuilding efforts.
- Global Giving – the website is dispersing funds to a variety of groups, including International Medical Corps, Save the Children and Japanese organizations on the scene.
2. Text a donation
- Mercy Corps - text “MED” to 80888 to send a $10 donation.
- The Salvation Army - text “JAPAN” or “QUAKE” to 80888 to send a $10 donation.
- American Red Cross - text “REDCROSS” to 90999 to send a $10 donation.
- World Vision - text “4JAPAN” or “4TSUNAMI” to 20222 to donate $10.
- International Medical Corps – text “MED” to 80888 to donate $10.
Want to save wildlife from the threat of an oil spill? Just go get your hair done. At least that’s what Enbridge wants you to do in their new MyHairCares initiative, that would turn 450,000 pounds of hair from salons across North America into “super-absorbent hair booms.”
Or so the media thought…
This next wave of oil spill efforts isn’t real at all, and the environmental spoof campaign is actually the latest work of The Yes Men.
From the official press release:
Earlier today, the world learned of oil transport giant Enbridge’s strategy for handling inevitable oil spills along its proposed pipeline through pristine British Columbian wilderness: mop it up with human hair.
The cockamamie “MyHairCares” hoax, dreamed up by former oil workers and involving outreach to over 1000 hair salons, was promoted in a slick Video News Release and involved a flurry of conflicting press releases. The original story ran in a number of major news outlets (archive will be posted shortly here), but was pulled with no retraction or explanation after a terse denial by Enbridge that seemed to miss the point entirely. (For a longer, better denial click here.)
“This was a funny way to dramatize the fact that neither Enbridge nor any other oil company can prevent spills, and that they basically have no cleanup plan,” said Shannon McPhail, a former Canadian oil worker and Canadian spokesperson for People Enbridge Ruined in Michigan (PERM), the group responsible for MyHairCares. “What’s happening in Michigan proves that.”
***
Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline would cut across the Rocky Mountains, the pristine Great Bear rain forest, and over 1,000 streams and rivers. The pipeline would carry 700,000 barrels a day of petroleum products across 1,170 kilometres between Alberta’s Tar Sands and the Pacific Coast, where supertankers would carry the crude though the treacherous Douglas Channel—an area in which currents render conventional oil containment booms useless.
“A major spill on the coast or in a river would be devastating and irreversible,” said McPhail. “Canada must not trade in our wilderness just to make some foreign oil companies rich.”
One salon owner contacted after the ruse lauded the activists’ approach to getting the media to pay attention to one of the most pressing environmental issues in North America. “I wasn’t tricked, I was educated,” said Brian Phillips, owner of World Salon in Toronto. “I had no idea what the people in Michigan were going through with Enbridge. We shouldn’t invite that treatment here in Canada.”
End result? Enbridge isn’t happy and is reportedly considering legal action.
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