Thursday, November 1, 2007

Shepherdstown Opera House ($6 Admission)

7:00 pm: Greasy Rider (2006, 47 mins) Produced and directed by Joey Carey and JJ Beck

A cross-country road-trip odyssey following two young filmmakers, Joey Carey and JJ Beck (who were students at the time), as they motor south and west to promote alternative fuels in a vegetable-oil powered 1981 Mercedes-Benz. Along the way they meet up with the likes of actor and biodiesel entrepreneur Morgan Freeman, Noam Chomsky, Yoko Ono and Tommy Chong. Can the world really run on fry oil?

7:50 pm: Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa (2006, 70 mins.) Produced by Eric Juhola, Jeremy Stulberg, Randy Stulberg

Continuing the ACFF tradition of showing people and their landscapes, no matter how odd, off-beat or strange, this film depicts a closed society with a distinctive relationship to the barren New Mexican desert. In a remote patch of scrub, without access to water or the electric grid, a band of Gulf War vets, teenage runaways, mentally ill and socially disillusioned recluses live in shacks and recombinant trailers under self-made civil conduct: Don't shoot your neighbor; don't steal from your neighbor. When a group of vegan Marxists invades their space, they make new laws - and enforce them. And yet, to them, it's all about the allure of the American landscape and their connection to the wild, free West. Viewer discretion: adult language and subject matter.

9:00 pm: Southbounders (2005, 85 mins.) Ben Wagner, writer, director, producer

This independent feature follows Olivia and two other hikers as she searches for life's meaning through the lens of a grueling six-month walk along the Appalachian Trail. Not just a hiking flick - ultimately, it's the restorative power of the natural world that helps bring clarity Olivia's questions. And the film offers a fascinating glimpse into the peculiar subculture of long-distance hiking so that we all understand why so many people head into the wilds to make sense of life's priorities. Viewer discretion advised: contains brief nudity.

Friday, November 2, 2007

National Conservation Training Center (Free Admission)

6:45 pm: Conversing with Aotearoa (2006, 15 mins.) Corrie Francis

In a breathtaking blend of animation, still photography, live action and the so-called real world, New Zealanders explore their personal connections with the environment in this era of technological and urbanized disengagement with the natural by journeying into the wilderness.

7:00 pm: National Geographic's Arctic Expedition (60 mins.)

Renowned adventurer, author and photographer Jon Waterman hosts this special preview of an upcoming film on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The program includes film footage, awe-inspiring stills and stories, and an inside look at making a "big nature" film.

8:00 pm: World Premiere Gates of the Arctic (2007, 57 mins.) Rory Banyard, producer/director

A spectacular journey to Alaska's Gates of the Arctic National Park focusing on the people who live there now through traditional skills of trapping, hunting and self-reliance, and of the people who inhabited this beautiful, but unforgiving landscape in the past. A rare view of a vanishing way of life.

9:15 pm: Aeon (2005, 15 mins.) Richard Sidey, director

An urban Koyaniskatsi landscape documentary. Without narration, above a percussion soundtrack, this film poem is a continuous flight through the built and natural environments of Wellington, New Zealand - it is life, mechanization, routine, nature, beauty and death in a major city.

9:30 pm: Red Velvet (2006, 58 mins.) Klaus Reisinger, director

Produced in France. In Southern Siberia's Altai mountains, where thousands of maral deer live in massive protected reserves. Following tradition, every spring their velvet antlers are cut off in a bloody ritual to provide Koreans with highly sought-after aphrodisiac. The film recounts an entire year in Altai, offering a haunting and graphic look at the subsistence modern-day lives spent harvesting deer antlers, followed by a disjointing journey to South Korea. It's a different look at conservation - how the preservation of a wild species can depend upon the preservation of traditions that we Americans might find shocking. Viewer Discretion Advised: Adult content and brief depictions of antler harvesting — the animals are released afterward.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

National Conservation Training Center - (Byrd Auditorium)
(Free Admission)

Family Film Festival

1:30 pm: Critter Quest (2007, 22 mins.) Linda Goldman, Producer

Presented under special arrangement with the Smithsonian Channel, join Peter Schriemer on a "backyard safari" and discover all sorts of living things right outside your back door on this hi-definition expedition.

2:00 pm: Charlotte's Web (2006, 80 mins.) Gary Winick, director

Under special arrangement with Walden Media, ACFF presents this poetic children's tale of friendship and the natural world on a young girl's family's farm - a world only she sees. Wilbur and his animal pals get a spectacular film treatment on NCTC's big screen - some pig, some movie!

Filmmakers' Forum

4:00 pm: The Worst Journey in the World (2007, 60 mins.) Produced by Suzanne Lavery

This feature film tells the little known story the epic hunt for penguin eggs during Captain Scott's polar expedition of 1910-1913. During their expedition the men underwent terrible privations; man-hauling sledges in total darkness for a full month and enduring extreme temperatures. This film is a quintessentially British tale of an ill-equipped and resolutely amateur team of adventurers battling the elements.

5:00 pm: Strange Days on Planet Earth: Predators (2005, 58 mins) Narrated by Edward Norton

Under special arrangement with National Geographic, this futuristic film examines the most dangerous animals on the planet. Around the world, from the forests of Venezuela to Yellowstone's majestic wilderness to the Caribbean's coral reefs, researchers are discovering predators play a vital role in the health of our natural systems. Knowing this, should we learn to live with predators? Can we?

6:00 pm: The Town That Was (58 mins.) Directed/produced by Chris Perkel and George Roland

Conservation is about more than open space - it's about deep connections to the places where we live. In 1962, when a trash fire ignited a coal seam beneath Centralia, Pa., there were 1,600 people living in the thriving mining town. Four decades later, the fire still burns and there are less than a dozen residents. A thousand buildings have been removed, leaving a ghost town of streets with a few scattered houses. This stranger-than-fiction tale chronicles the affection residents have for their hometown and the pain of leaving it. It reveals one man's unusual obsession with keeping the town alive as he becomes the caretaker of a changed landscape and the guardian of the town's rites and rituals - knowing well that his town's fate is ultimately out of his hands.

7:00 pm: Summercamp! (2006, 85 mins.) Produced and directed by Bradley Beesley and Sarah Price

Summercamp! follows the day-to-day drama of 90 kids let loose in the woods at Swift Nature Camp in northern Wisconsin. Amidst group activities, showy arguments, and secret conversations, filmmakers Bradley Beesley and Sarah Price submerge themselves into this curious camp subculture, capturing a diverse array of adolescents from all economic and social backgrounds. Summercamp! suggests that children in nature behave in unexpected ways.

8:30 pm: Student Award Winner

The best student film of the year will be screen and honored.

9:00 pm: Premiere Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People (2007, 58 mins) Ross Spears, series director

The first film series to chronicle the history of one of the world's oldest mountain ranges and diverse peoples who have inhabited them. The mountains themselves are the central character. Sissy Spacek, E.O. Wilson and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and others narrate this story of how the mountains have shaped the people and how people have shaped the mountains - the dynamic interaction of natural and human history.

National Conservation Training Center - (Theater 151)
(Free Admission)

Student Film Competition

11:45 am: Aeon (2005, 15 mins.) Richard Sidey, director

An urban Koyaniskatsi landscape documentary. Without narration, above a percussion soundtrack, this film poem is a continuous flight through the built and natural environments of Wellington, New Zealand - it is life, mechanization, routine, nature, beauty and death in a major city.

12:00 pm: Conversing with Aotearoa (2006, 15 mins.) Corrie Francis

In a breathtaking blend of animation, still photography, live action and the so-called real world, New Zealanders explore their personal connections with the environment in this era of technological and urbanized disengagement with the natural by journeying into the wilderness.

12:15 pm: Eco Views (2007, 28 mins) American University Environmental Film Program

Fourteen student filmmakers collaborate on four short tales of the environmental history of the Chesapeake Bay, north America's largest estuary: The River, Hands on The Future, The Bay is Your Oyster, and Deep Bonds: Mattaponi.

12:45 pm: Greasy Rider (2006, 47 mins) Produced and directed by Joey Carey and JJ Beck

A cross-country road-trip odyssey following two young filmmakers, Joey Carey and JJ Beck (who were students at the time), as they motor south and west to promote alternative fuels in a vegetable-oil powered 1981 Mercedes-Benz. Along the way they meet up with the likes of actor and biodiesel entrepreneur Morgan Freeman, Noam Chomsky, Yoko Ono and Tommy Chong. Can the world really run on fry oil?

1:30 pm: Against the Current (2007, 19 mins.) Kathy Kasic, producer

Who owns the water? Along the Yellowstone River in Montana, efforts to balance the ranch economy with the natural river systems that support native trout raises questions about how people globally will manage this essential resource.

Independent Film Forum

2:00 pm: Restoring the Balance (2003, 28 mins.) Kevin White, writer/director

Monty Python alum John Cleese investigates an ongoing battle against invasive rats on Anacapa Island, a jewel in the Channel Island National Park, just 12 miles off the coast of Southern California. The rats are eating the eggs and chicks of nesting seabirds. Because rats are responsible for an estimated 60 percent of the world's extinctions, the problem becomes clear: remove the rats or face continuing pressure on the island's species.

2:30 pm: Bird Song and Coffee (2006, 56 mins.) Anne Macksoud, producer

Coffee drinkers will be astonished to learn how their morning cup is inextricably connected to families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions like Costa Rica. The film features scientists, coffee lovers, bird lovers, and the coffee farmers themselves. We learn how their lives and ours are linked, economically and environmentally, and how our seemingly insignificant daily routines affect our world and our ecological future. Would you like your coffee black or green?

3:30 pm: Blowing Up Paradise (2006, 60 mins.) Ben Lewis, producer/director

Quite possibly the most stylishly hip environmental flick ever made. The A-Bomb meets a tropical paradise in this tragic tale of the Cold War in French Polynesia. Colorful archival footage and a 1960s Euro-glamour soundtrack chronicle France's nuclear tests in violation of the international test ban treaty. The film shows how a tiny group of Tahitian radicals fight for their homeland's natural and cultural heritage by forming an anti-nuke resistance cell.

4:30 pm: Lusha of Samage (2003, 25 mins.) Sun Jianying, director

Produced in China (with subtitles). The Samage mountain range, in the highlands of northwestern Yunnan, China, is the home of the endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey. It is the only primate known to live at such high altitude. This is the story of these rare and charismatic creatures in one of the world's most exotic environments.

5:00 pm: The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (2006, 53 mins.) Faith Morgan, director

A film about both peak oil theory (point at which the maximum global output of petroleum is reached) and how society can overcome seemingly insurmountable problems. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy suffered at the loss of half its oil imports. The country focused its slow recovery on sustainable growth rather than relying solely on finding new sources of oil. A cautionary tale for the world as oil reserves are depleted.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

National Conservation Training Center - (Byrd Auditorium)
(Free Admission)

Filmmakers' Forum

1:00 pm: When Pigs Fly (2006, 62 mins.) Eric Breitenbach and Phyllis Redman, writer/producers/directors

This film pushes the boundaries of conservation filmmaking. After a disabling truck accident, Lory Yazurlo finds herself a quadriplegic, confined to a wheelchair and depressed. Legal battles over her insurance settlement adds further to her isolation. She finds renewed life and joy by creating a pig sanctuary, turning her 20-acre Central Florida home into a haven for 700 of them. Yazurlo is fiercely independent but totally reliant on her parents for her care and help with her porcine pals. It's an incredible story of loss, contradiction, strength and how our connections with mud, animals, nature and life's most base routines can resurrect the spirit. Viewer discretion advised; contains adult content. Followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.

2:30 pm: Charlotte's Web (2006, 80 mins.) Gary Winick, director

Under special arrangement with Walden Media, ACFF presents this poetic children's tale of friendship and the natural world on a young girl's family's farm - a world only she sees. Wilbur and his animal pals get a spectacular film treatment on NCTC's big screen - some pig, some movie!

4:30 pm: A Woman Among Wolves (2007, 60 mins.)

One woman's passion for wolves leads her on a quest to study the animals in the wilds of Canada. Collecting field data, hair, DNA samples and other scientific evidence, Gudrun Pflueger has spent 6 years in search of the coast wolves of British Columbia. As seen on Smithsonian Channel.

National Conservation Training Center - (Theater 151)
(Free Admission)

Independent Film Forum

2:30 pm: Gates of the Arctic (2007, 57 mins.) Rory Banyard, producer/director

A spectacular journey to Alaska's Gates of the Arctic National Park focusing on the people who live there now through traditional skills of trapping, hunting and self-reliance, and of the people who inhabited this beautiful, but unforgiving landscape in the past. A rare view of a vanishing way of life.

3:30 pm: Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People (2007, 58 mins) Ross Spears, series director

The first film series to chronicle the history of one of the world's oldest mountain ranges and diverse peoples who have inhabited them. The mountains themselves are the central character. Sissy Spacek, E.O. Wilson and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and others narrate this story of how the mountains have shaped the people and how people have shaped the mountains - the dynamic interaction of natural and human history.