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Athena Cinema, Environmental Studies, and the Alden Library present the sixth year of the Sustainability Film Series, working in partnership with many sponsors. Our vision and goal are those of years past: to offer attendees the opportunity to acquire a deeper understanding of the current issues related to global environmental and sustainable challenges and solutions. We aim to bring together students, faculty and regional community members. The program recognizes the strength of this integration, coming together and learning from each other. Following each screening, we invite audience members to join us for a panel discussion hosted by faculty members, students, and community members. Please join us for a conversation following these beautiful, thought-provoking and timely films. All admissions free.

The UNESCO Mbaracayú Reserve in rural Paraguay is one of the last well-preserved remnants of the Alto Paraná Atlantic forests in Paraguay. Daughters of the Forest, set in the Mbaracayu forest, follows a group of girls in one of the most remote forests left on earth who attend a radical high school where they learn to protect the threatened forest and forge a better future for themselves. This intimate verité documentary offers a rare glimpse where adolescent girls are provided the opportunity to develop into brave young women. Filmed over the course of five years, we follow the girls from their humble homes in indigenous villages through the year after their graduation to see exactly how their revolutionary education has and will continue to impact their future lives.

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56 MIN

Athena Cinema, Environmental Studies, and the Alden Library present the sixth year of the Sustainability Film Series, working in partnership with many sponsors. Our vision and goal are those of years past: to offer attendees the opportunity to acquire a deeper understanding of the current issues related to global environmental and sustainable challenges and solutions. We aim to bring together students, faculty and regional community members. The program recognizes the strength of this integration, coming together and learning from each other. Following each screening, we invite audience members to join us for a panel discussion hosted by faculty members, students, and community members. Please join us for a conversation following these beautiful, thought-provoking and timely films. All admissions free.

A story of local farmers from Laurel Valley Creamery in Meigs County, Ohio. Farmsteaders is as much a study of place as it is a study of persistence. Having abandoned a career as a food processing engineer at General Mills, Nick returns home, the prodigal son, and he, his wife Celeste and their young family resurrect his late grandfather’s dairy farm. Heroic, benign and accessible, Nick and Celeste’s meditations on life, legacy, and resistance offer an unexpected voice from a forsaken people – those who grow the food that sustains us.

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59 MIN

Athena Cinema, Environmental Studies, and the Alden Library present the sixth year of the Sustainability Film Series, working in partnership with many sponsors. Our vision and goal are those of years past: to offer attendees the opportunity to acquire a deeper understanding of the current issues related to global environmental and sustainable challenges and solutions. We aim to bring together students, faculty and regional community members. The program recognizes the strength of this integration, coming together and learning from each other. Following each screening, we invite audience members to join us for a panel discussion hosted by faculty members, students, and community members. Please join us for a conversation following these beautiful, thought-provoking and timely films. All admissions free.

Water Warriors (22 mins)

When an energy company begins searching for natural gas in New Brunswick, Canada, indigenous and white families unite to drive out the company in a campaign to protect their water and way of life. Texas-based SWN Resources arrived in New Brunswick, Canada to explore for natural gas. The region is known for its forestry, farming and fishing industries, which are both commercial and small-scale subsistence operations that rural communities depend on. In response, a multicultural group of unlikely warriors–including members of the Mi’kmaq Elsipogtog First Nation, French-speaking Acadians and white, English-speaking families–set up a series of road blockades, preventing exploration. After months of resistance, their efforts not only halted drilling; they elected a new government and won an indefinite moratorium on fracking in the province.

From Flint: Voices From a Poisoned City (25 mins)

From Flint goes beyond the news headlines to spotlight the impact of the devastating water contamination crisis on the people of Flint, Michigan. The film highlights the stories of residents who were personally injured, along with the work of local organizations and individuals that rallied to support them. Flint is a city of 100,000 people, with 41% living below the poverty line and an African-American majority. The city switched in 2014 to water from the polluted Flint River to save money, but the new water supply wasn’t properly treated. Lead from aging lines leached into the local water supply, along with coliform bacteria and other contaminants, creating a serious health crisis. Up to 12,000 children may have been exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water. Some residents were also forced to abandon their homes without warning. Residents describe their personal struggles, including the serious medical issues that afflicted them — seizures, rashes, problems affecting newborns and young children –as well as their anger over a government that continually failed to protect them. The citizens of Flint make their displeasure known through emotional testimonies to officials about the impact on children and families, as well as through large, peaceful protests. The film also highlights how residents and local organizations have come together to help and support one another through the crisis.

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47 MIN

THE ANTHROPOLOGIST examines climate change like no other film before. The fate of the planet is considered from the perspective of American teenager Katie Crate. Over the course of five years, she travels alongside her mother Susie, an anthropologist studying the impact of climate change on indigenous communities. Their journey parallels that of renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead, who for decades sought to understand how global change affects remote cultures.

Free admission!

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78 MIN

At the U.N. Climate talks in Paris, two weeks after terrorists attacks created a state of emergency that outlawed all “unofficial” political gatherings, follow seven global grassroots activists as they attempt to unleash the only force that can prevent catastrophic climate change: the will of the people. Not Without Us documents a crucial moment in history, framing the root causes of the global climate crisis and the greatest inequality in the history of mankind, as one and the same. Seen from the perspective of frontline communities, the film interweaves the personal stories and motivations of the activists portrayed, conveying to a broader audience why the call for deeper and far reaching change is not only necessary, but also humane.

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72 MIN

Filmmakers Erik Pauser and Dylan Williams spend five years intimately following the trail of an unlikely group of activists whose aim is to investigate how profits from the illegal logging that has annihilated more than 90% of the Malaysian Borneo Rainforest, have been money laundered into property portfolios all around the world.

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90 MIN

In this classic detective story, investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback travels to West Virginia to uncover the truth behind a massive chemical spill that left 300,000 people without drinking water for months. But when Hoback discovers an obscene collusion between chemical corporations and the highest levels of government, the investigation spirals in a terrifying direction, and we learn the frightening truth about what lies upstream of us all.

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89 MIN

Follows the dramatic rise of the historic #NODAPL native-led peaceful resistance at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, North Dakota, which captured the world’s attention. Thousands of activists converged from around the country to stand in solidarity with the Water Protectors (activists) protesting the construction of the $3.7 billion Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The Water Protectors at Standing Rock have awakened the nation and forever changed the way we fight for clean water, the environment and the future of our planet.

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89 MIN

The cell and smartphone industries have saturated the market; in 2015, it was estimated that 98 percent of all US citizens aged between 18 – 29 years owned a mobile phone. A staggering 86 percent owned smartphones. By 2020, four billion people will have a personal computer. Five billion will own a mobile phone. In an investigation that spans the globe, filmmaker Sue Williams investigates the underbelly of the electronics industry. What was uncovered tells an entirely different story to the falsified “clean industry” reputation promoted by the global electronics industry and the semi-conductor industry.

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73 MIN