Wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family's farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key. With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family's wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year's high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is. Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.
Canada is leading the way when it comes to dark sky preservation and the fight against light pollution. See how dark sky preserves in Wood Buffalo, Jasper and Elk Island National Parks educate the public about the importance of protecting the night sky for the health of humans and wildlife. Then visit star parties in British Columbia and Alberta where amateur astronomers and astrophotographers watch and celebrate the night sky.
Ambassadors of the Sky
2016
0
First Nations fight to end grizzly bear trophy hunting in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia. The Heiltsuk, Kitasoo Xai'xais and Gitga'at First Nations enforce a ban by using Coastal Guardian Watchmen, while the Raincoast Conservation Foundation purchases trophy hunting licenses in the area to prevent a hunt from taking place. The film offers unique access to Canada's First Nations and a breathtaking view of the majestic animals inhabiting the Great Bear Rainforest, including the elusive Spirit Bear.
The Price of the Prize
2016
0
The story of the children who work 12-14 hour days in the fields without the protection of child labor laws. These children are not toiling in the fields in some far away land. They are working in America.
The Harvest (La Cosecha)
2011
8
What will it really take, to transition from oil and coal, to the energies of tomorrow? SWITCH goes where no film has gone before, deep into the world's most restricted energy sites, to depoliticize competing power sources, make the technical accessible, and discover the truth of our energy future. Test audiences have raved, calling it, 'The most important energy film since An Inconvenient Truth.'
SWITCH
2012
4
A diminishing water supply is driving people from their land in a remote region of Nepal. The younger generation of the Gurung family adapts by commuting from their ancestral home, where subsistence depends on grazing goats and cows, to a village that has a commercial apple orchard, fed by irrigation. “We cannot give up cultivating our fields,” a elderly man explains. “The apple farm is not going to be able to feed us easily.” The older generation believes that water shortages stem from road building and bulldozing, upsetting the natural order, a young man explains. Both generations fly prayer flags, beseeching water.
When Glaciers Go
2020
0
This documentary short is a visual portrait of “Prairie Sentinels,” the vertical grain elevators that once dotted the Canadian Prairies. Surveying an old diesel elevator’s day-to-day operations, this film is a simple, honest vignette on the distinctive wooden structures that would eventually become a symbol of the Prairie provinces.
Grain Elevator
1981
0
Climate is changing. Instead of showing all the worst that can happen, this documentary focuses on the people suggesting solutions and their actions.
Demain
2015
7
WIEBO'S WAR tells the story of a Christian community, at war with the oil and gas industry. Wiebo Ludwig is a suspect in a series of pipeline bombings near his farm. The bombings echo a campaign of sabotage he waged 10 years ago: barricading roads, blowing up wells, culminating in the unsolved death of a teen aged girl. The Ludwigs live according to their religious values. They are self-sufficient in food and energy, but isolated, with seven unmarried adult children, and 38 grandchildren. They believe that those who don't share their beliefs, like filmmaker David York, are living in terrible darkness.
Wiebo's War
2011
0
Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.
Surviving Progress
2011
7
Paul and Lindsey, a couple who left the hustle of city life for country life. From caring for animals to sustaining the land, their journey is filled with challenges, heartwarming triumphs, and a deep connection to nature. Discover how they’ve redefined what it means to live a meaningful life.
Learning To Grow
0
A richly lyrical documentary celebration of the vibrant beach life in the North East of England, constructed entirely out of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's black & white photographs.
The Writing in the Sand
1991
10
Permaculture teacher Geoff Lawton designs and builds a dam and water harvesting system on a farm.
Harvesting Water the Permaculture Way
2007
6
Geoff Lawton takes you into the world of Permaculture and explains the basic concepts for beginners.
Introduction to Permaculture Design
2009
6
From the Black Earth is a collaboration between Bristol based company Cables and Cameras, and a local farmer Humphrey Lloyd. Employing both lucid speakers and poetic camera work, the film poses stark questions such as; why does food poverty exist in a nation of plenty, and why are people of colour so under represented not only in our countryside and farms, but in the environmental movement more broadly? By giving a platform to people of colour who are connecting with nature and working the land, this short documentary starts to unpick these questions...
From the Black Earth
2022
0
America is addicted to oil. President George Bush said so… and now that phrase is echoed everywhere. But are we really “addicted”? Our daily lives are dripping in oil. It’s in virtually everything we use and fuels everything we do. To be sure, it is something to worry about. Are we going to run out? Aren’t we fighting wars for oil? But, if we do slow the flow, how will that change the way we live? When it comes to what we’re told about oil, there’s rhetoric and then there’s reality. Who can we believe? The media? Politicians? Environmental activists? You’d be surprised. For nearly ten years, journalist turned media analyst MARK MATHIS has studied our use of oil. And what he found shocked him so thoroughly that he made a movie about the misinformation, distortions and even outright lies about oil. We do have an “oil problem” in America (and the world), but it’s not what you’ve been told. So, it’s time to Fill Up on Truth… for a change.
spOILed
2011
0
A detailed overview of contemporary life in the tiny South Pacific country of Tuvalu, this film documents the earth's first sovereign nation faced with total destruction due to the effects of global warming. With a population of about 11,000 living on a total landmass of only 20 square miles – less than Manhattan – spread over nine low-lying atolls 600 miles to the north of Fiji, Tuvalu has been inhabited for over four millenia. The warm-spirited and highly community-oriented people of this ex-British colony struggle to survive economically while confronting the likelihood of having to evacuate their homeland en masse within the next 50 years.
Trouble in Paradise
2004
0
After a mine explosion kills her brother, a pro-coal activist joins forces with a tree-hugging grandmother to take down the most dangerous coal company in the United States.
Overburden
2015
0
Interweaves the lives of the threatened monarch butterfly with an indigenous community in Mexico fighting to restore the forest they nearly destroyed.
The Guardians
2018
5
This documentary depicts a vivid example of America's current culture war. It shows a rural community, Philomath, Oregon, that is making a large transition from once being a dominant force through an "old time" profession, the timber industry, to one that is dominated by professionals and techies, the "information age". This is shown by the drastic decline of lumber mills in the area. In 1980, there were twelve mills around Philomath, but twenty-five years later there were only two. The largest employers are no longer the lumber mills but Oregon State University in Corvallis, which is about six miles from Philomath, and a Hewlett-Packard center involved in engineering ink-jet components.
Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon
2005
7
When National Geographic photographer James Balog asked, “How can one take a picture of climate change?” his attention was immediately drawn to ice. Soon he was asked to do a cover story on glaciers that became the most popular and well-read piece in the magazine during the last five years. But for Balog, that story marked the beginning of a much larger and longer-term project that would reach epic proportions.
Chasing Ice
2012
7