PEFF 2017 Schedule
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Monday, March 27
The Islands and the Whales
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In their remote home in the North Atlantic the Faroe Islanders have always eaten what nature could provide, proud to put local food on the table. The land yields little, so they have always relied on harvesting their seas.
Hunting whales and seabirds kept them alive for generations, and gave them the way of life they love; a life they would pass on to their children. But today they face a grave threat to this tradition. It is not the controversy surrounding whaling that threatens the Faroese way of life; the danger is coming from the whales themselves. The Faroese are among the first to feel the effects of our ever more polluted oceans. They have discovered that their beloved whales are toxic, contaminated by the outside world. What once secured their survival now endangers their children and the Faroe Islanders must make a choice between health and tradition. Film followed by a Q&A with director Mike Day. 7 p.m. at the James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, Princeton University
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Tuesday, March 28
Panel Discussion: Investing in Community
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Screening of Small Business Revolution — a short film that explores how small businesses drive our economy and help communities bond and prosper. The film will be followed by a panel of local entrepreneurs and business owners discussing the advantages and challenges of running a small business in the global economy and a Q&A.
Featuring Alec Gioseffi (Cherry Valley Cooperative Center for Permaculture & Holistic Wellness); Charles Rosen (Jersey Cider Works); Dean Smith (jaZams). Moderated by Fran McManus. Presented in partnership with The Whole Earth Center of Princeton. 4 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Death By A Thousand Cuts
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In Death By A Thousand Cuts, Eligio Eloy Vargas, alias Melaneo, a Dominican Park Ranger in the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park was found brutally murdered by machete. At the time, he was believed to have been on patrol investigating an illegal charcoal production site often run by Haitians coming across the border into protected Dominican forests. This murder becomes the metaphor for the larger story of increasing tension between Haiti and the Dominican Republic over illicit charcoal exploitation and mass deforestation. Death By A Thousand Cuts is a feature-length documentary film that is a double murder investigation, seeking to learn about the circumstances of Melaneo’s death and the systematic eradication of the Dominican forests.
Film followed by a Q&A with director Juan Mejia Botero. Free tickets available at the Princeton Garden Theatre box office. 7 p.m. at the Princeton Garden Theatre, 160 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ
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Wednesday, March 29
Red Power Energy
2016 | 60 minutes
Lisa D. Olken (Director, Editor, and Executive Producer) and Larry Pourier (Director)
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A provocative film from the American Indian perspective that reframes today’s controversial energy debate while the fate of the environment hangs in the balance. Red Power Energy illustrates the complex realities of Indian reservations grappling with how to balance their natural resources with their traditional beliefs.
Co-sponsored by Princeton Environmental Institute. Please note: Parking is not available in Lot 10 until after 5pm. Festival Goers are encouraged to use on street parking or local parking lots for the events in Friend 101. 4:30 p.m. at the Friend Center 101, Princeton University
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Catching the Sun
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As the global race to lead the clean energy future kicks into full gear, an unlikely ensemble of characters in the US and China make radical moves: activist Van Jones transitions from leading a solar-installation training program in Richmond, CA into the spotlight of public policy as his trainees fight for employment in a market that hasn’t caught up to their skillset; Wally Jiang, a charismatic Chinese entrepreneur, dreams of building a “solar city” in the Texan desert. Can the US build a clean energy economy to help solve both inequality and climate change?
Film followed by a Q&A with director Shalini Kantayya. Co-sponsored by Princeton Environmental Institute. 7 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Thursday, March 30
Author Talk: Amitav Ghosh
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Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land (1993), Ghosh examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.
Co-sponsored by Princeton Environmental Institute. Please note: Parking is not available in Lot 10 until after 5pm. Festival Goers are encouraged to use on street parking or local parking lots for the events in Friend 101. 4:30 p.m. at the Friend Center 101, Princeton University
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One Big Home
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Trophy homes threaten the unique character of Martha’s Vineyard. Ten, fifteen, even twenty-thousand-square-foot houses are going up around the Island. Not only do these mansions stand in stark contrast to traditional cottages, most sit empty for ten months a year yet are heated year round. When he feels complicit in wrecking the place he calls home, carpenter and Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival founder Thomas Bena takes off his tool belt and picks up a camera. Bumping up against tired clichés, angry homeowners, and builders who would rather look the other way, he works with his community and attempts to create a new bylaw that would limit house size.
Film followed by a Q&A with director/producer Thomas Bena, producer/editor James Holland and Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert. 7 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Friday, March 31
Triple Play — 3 Films:
Makwa Jiimaan: Deep Water, Deep Roots
2016 | 60 min.
Directed by Derrick LaMere; produced by Derrick LaMere, Robin Potts, John Zinser
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In the summer of 2016, six Teme-Augama Anishnabai youth set out to build a traditional birch bark canoe. Scouting, harvesting, and building all from their traditional homeland n’Daki-Menan. Watch as these young adults embrace their culture and answer the call to follow in the footsteps of their ancestors and build a canoe by traditional means.
12 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Melting Stars
2017 | 15 min.
Directed and produced by Kate Green
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Melting Stars unravels the mystery behind one of the largest most catastrophic species die off’s in recorded history. In the summer of 2013 a scuba diver off the coast of West Vancouver discovered that the starfish were dying off in the millions and suffering. This is the premiere screening of the film.
1:30 p.m. at the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Herald of the Sea
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Alabamians know oysters as a delicious delicacy, but they are also a crucial species that clean our waters and protect our shorelines. Already stressed due to ongoing pollution and water degradation, oyster populations were hit hard by the BP oil spill while ongoing oil and gas exploration and the potential for future spills leave them vulnerable. In this film we trace the impacts on the ecological power of oysters as the herald of our Gulf, telling us whether our oceans are healthy or in peril.
1:45 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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The Land Beneath Our Feet
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The Land Beneath Our Feet weaves together rare archival footage from a 1926 Harvard expedition to Liberia with the journey of a young Liberian man, uprooted by war, seeking to understand how the past has shaped land conflicts in his country today. This film is an explosive reminder of how large-scale land grabs are transforming livelihoods across the planet.
Film followed by Q&A with director Gregg Mitman. Co-Sponsored by Princeton Environmental Institute. 4:30 p.m. at Bowen Hall Auditorium Room 222, Princeton University
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Birds of May
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The New Jersey premiere of Birds of May, by filmmaker Jared Flesher, tells the story of the federally threatened rufa red knot and its annual visit to the Delaware Bay.
Following the movie, stay for a Q&A with director Jared Flesher, a presentation by shorebird biologist Larry Niles and Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s David Wheeler, wildlife art by James Fiorentino, and poetry readings by the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program, featuring Cynthia Arrieu-King and Catherine Doty. The event is part of “Because We Come from Everything: Poetry and Migration,” a series organized by the newly formed National Poetry Coalition. Ice cream and sorbet courtesy of the bent spoon. 7 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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April and the Extraordinary World
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Paris, 1941. A family of scientists is on the brink of discovering a powerful longevity serum when all of a sudden a mysterious force abducts them, leaving their young daughter April behind. Ten years later, April lives alone with her dear cat, Darwin, and carries on her family’s research in secret. But she soon finds herself at the center of a shadowy and far-reaching conspiracy, and on the run from government agents, bicycle-powered dirigibles and cyborg rat spies.
Featuring special guests Brian Kraus, co-host of These Vibes are Too Cosmic and SYMPOH. Ice cream and sorbet courtesy of the bent spoon. Co-sponsored by PHS 151MM Film Magazine and Princeton Day School’s EnAct Club and Energy & Climate Scholars. A high school/college students-only screening at 9 p.m. in the
Community Room, Princeton Public Library |
Saturday, April 1
Wallaby Tales
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Wildlife educator Travis Gale returns to the library sharing his humor and live animal guests from all over the world in a presentation for the whole family. Entertaining, high-energy and educational, the program highlights the importance of protecting the wildlife of the world. For children ages 5 and older.
11 a.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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The Eagle Huntress
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The Eagle Huntress follows Aisholpan, a 13 year old girl, as she trains to become the first female in twelve generations of her Kazakh family to become an eagle hunter, and rises to the pinnacle of a tradition that has been handed down from father to son for centuries. Set against the breathtaking expanse of the Mongolian steppe, The Eagle Huntress features an intimate tale of a young girl’s quest.
1 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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A Plastic Ocean
2016 | 102 min.
Craig Lesson (Director); Adam Leipzig (Producer); Jo Ruxton (Producer)
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A Plastic Ocean begins when journalist Craig Leeson, searching for the elusive blue whale, discovers plastic waste in what should be pristine ocean. In this adventure documentary, Craig teams up with free diver Tanya Streeter and an international team of scientists and researchers, and they travel to twenty locations around the world over the next four years to explore the fragile state of our oceans, uncover alarming truths about plastic pollution, and reveal working solutions that can be put into immediate effect.
3 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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The Pine Barrens
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The Pine Barrens explores the symbiotic yet sometimes destructive relationship between man and nature. Through impressions of moments with individuals spanning several years, the film looks the ways in which a sense of place has influence on identity and at how the feeling of loss, both of a way of life and through the gradual development of the environment which gave birth to that way of life, impacts those identities.
A unique performance edition with The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra. Film followed by a Q&A with director David Scott Kessler. 7 p.m. at Frist Campus Center Lecture Hall 302, Princeton University
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Sunday, April 2
In Pursuit of Silence
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In Pursuit of Silence is a meditative exploration of our relationship with silence, sound and the impact of noise on our lives. Beginning with an ode to John Cage’s ground-breaking composition 4’33”, In Pursuit of Silence takes us on an immersive cinematic journey around the globe– from a traditional tea ceremony in Kyoto, to the streets of the loudest city on the planet, Mumbai during the wild festival season – and instantly inspires us to experience silence and celebrate the wonders of our world.
Sunday Brunch Screening with light refreshments, tea and coffee (courtesy of Small World Coffee). 11 a.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
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In 1960, Jane Jacob’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds with its exploration of the consequences of modern planners and architects reconfiguration of cities. Jacobs was also an activist who was involved in many fights in mid-century New York to stop ‘master builder’ Robert Moses from running roughshod over the city. This film retraces the battles for the city as personified by Jacobs and Moses, as urbanization moves to the very front of the global agenda. Many of the clues for formulating solutions to the dizzying array of urban issues can be found in Jacob’s prescient text and a close second look at her thinking and writing about cities is very much in order. This film sets out to examine the city of today through the lens of one of its greatest champions.
Film followed by a talk with Alison Isenberg, Princeton University Professor of History; Co-Director, Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. 1:30 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry
2016 | 82 minutes
Directed by Laura Dunn & Jef Sewell
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A portrait of the world as lensed through the works of farmer, writer and activist, Wendell Berry, Look & See revolves around the divergent stories of several residents of Henry County, Kentucky who each face difficult choices that will dramatically reshape their relationship with the land and their community.
Film followed by a talk by Joseph Heckman, Ph.D.; Professor of Soil Science, Rutgers University; NOFA-NJ board member. 4:30 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Chasing Coral
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Coral reefs are the nursery for all life in the oceans, a remarkable ecosystem that sustains us. Yet with carbon emissions warming the seas, a phenomenon called “coral bleaching”—a sign of mass coral death—has been accelerating around the world, and the public has no idea of the scale or implication of the catastrophe silently raging underwater.Enter Jeff Orlowski, director of Chasing Ice, which created irrefutable, visual proof of the melting ice caps. Orlowski’s next project is similarly evidentiary and powerful. Chasing Coral taps into the collective will and wisdom of an ad man, a self-proclaimed coral nerd, top-notch camera designers, and renowned marine biologists as they invent the first time-lapse camera to record bleaching events as they happen. Unfortunately, the effort is anything but simple, and the team doggedly battles technical malfunctions and the force of nature in pursuit of documenting the indisputable and tragic transformation below the waves.
Film followed by a Q&A by videoconference with Zack Rago, one of the subjects of the film. 7:30 p.m. in the Community Room, Princeton Public Library
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Upcoming Special Events
Friday, April 14
Standing Rock From the Eyes of Three Filmmakers
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Three filmmakers screen clips from their films-in-progress, followed by discussion.
Featuring: 4:30 p.m. at McCormick 101, Princeton University
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Wednesday, April 26
The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier and More Creative
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Award-winning author Florence Williams takes us from forest trails in Korea to islands in Finland and eucalyptus groves in California in a presentation about the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain, mood, health, relationships, and creativity. This is a special event of the 2017 Princeton Environmental Film Festival and is co-sponsored by the D&R Greenway Land Trust.
RSVP at 609-924-4646 or rsvp@drgreenway.org 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.) at the Johnson Education Center,
D&R Greenway Land Trust |