$12 General Admission, $9 Member, $7 child age 14 or younger

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A program of inspiring short films with environmental/nature/outdoor themes.

BURNED followed by a Q & A with directors Alan Dater and Lisa Mertin
USA/Duration: 30 mins
Directed by Alan Dater and Lisa Mertin

BURNED tells the little-known story of the accelerating destruction of our forests for fuel and probes the policy loopholes, huge subsidies, and blatant green washing of the burgeoning biomass electric power industry.

DETROIT HIVES
USA / Duration: 6 mins
Directed by: Palmer Morse, Rachel Weinberg
Honeybees lead the charge in Tim Paule and Nicole Lindsey’s fight against urban blight in Detroit. Their fast-growing Detroit Hives has resurrected seven of the city’s approximately 90,000 abandoned lots by setting up flourishing beehives. With Detroit’s more than 2,000 registered hives, the couple are part of a growing community movement. They built their first apiary on a lot purchased for $340 in partnership with Detroit Land Banks. As Nicole says, “you don’t have to have a million dollars in your bank account to start an idea.”

AKUNA
USA / Duration: 6 mins 
Directed by: Jess Colquhoun

“I didn’t think I had a future,” Will Robinson says of coming home from Iraq with PTSD and injuries. For 12 years, he endured the dead ends of medication-and-alcohol abuse and ineffective therapy. Then inspiration struck. He tackled the Pacific Crest Trail, then the Appalachian Trail, walking 3,800 miles on his own path to recovery. “Hiking gave me the ability to be the person that I always was, the confident person who was capable of doing anything,” says Robinson, whose trail name is Akuna. He’s already eyeing his next objective: The Continental Divide Trail.

THE ACCIDENTIAL ENVIRONMENTALIST: CATHERINE FLOWERS
USA / Duration: 10 mins
Directed by: Ellen Esling
After visiting a raw sewage site in her native Lowndes County, Ala., Catherine Flowers, founder and executive director of the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise, contracts a mysterious rash. Flowers, whose work focuses on poverty and race, wonders if it’s a disease American doctors don’t test for. Soon she — and 34.5 percent of county residents tested — are diagnosed with hookworm, a sewage-harbored disease long thought eradicated in the U.S. Galvanized, Flowers brings the issue to the worldwide stage — affecting change and adding environmentalist to her bona fides.
CLIMBING OUT OF A DISASTER
USA / Duration: 9 mins
Directed by: Dominic Gill

Bryant Huffman spent his days’ deep water soloing, sport climbing and bouldering as the founder of Climbing Puerto Rico. Then Hurricane Maria dropped a nuclear bomb of water and wind, which destroyed much of the island. With his work as a guide temporarily suspended, Huffman and his climbing buddies put their skills to good use by morphing into emergency arborists. And out of the devastation comes a glimmer of something positive. The hurricane peeled huge chunks of limestone from cliffs, creating scores of new routes. Climbing Out of A Disaster about shifting your perspective to see the silver lining in calamity.

THE THEORY OF HUMAN MOTIVATION
USA/ Duration: 3:15 mins
Directed by Duct Tape Then Beer

What gets you up in the morning? There are fundamentals: water, air, food. But from there it gets deeper. If you’re like us, it’s a need to thrive, grow, to become the person we dream of being. We wake up to close the gaps between the supposed to do’s and the want to do’s.

“This film elicited a powerful and passionate response from our audience this year with many saying they had no idea about this issue and its devastating impacts. BURNED reveals the shocking destruction of our forests for fuel and the resultant rise in carbon emissions that exceed those of coal-burning.”

Audience Choice Award, American Conservation Film Festival Committee