The Aspen Center for Environmental Studies is holding its first-ever film festival on Wednesday. The thirteen films featured are meant to connect people with their environment and inspire advocacy. Aspen Public Radio’s Marci Krivonen reports.
“River of Eden” is one of the films in the festival. Basalt-based photographer Pete McBride traveled to Fiji for the film.
"Fiji everyone thinks is sand, sea and sun. It is, but it has these amazing mountains and the river is like nothing I’d ever seen."
For two weeks, McBride rafted the upper Navua River, the only protected river of its kind in the South Pacific. He talked to native Fijians.
"The locals call it the river to their ancestors," he says.
With threats of development and damming, nine families and a raft company came together to protect the river.
"It’s pretty neat to see what can happen when a small group gets together because in my opinion, pretty much every river that I’ve seen around the planet is facing a lot of pressure."
McBride’s film will be shown alongside others like Oscar-nominated https://vimeo.com/ondemand/whiteearth">White Earth. It captures North Dakota’s oil boom through children’s eyes.
"The thirteen films really vary from about three minutes to 30 minutes and everything in between," says Olivia Siegel, Community Outreach Director for the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. She helped select the films.
"A lot of environmental documentaries can be pretty heavy and I didn’t want that. My goal for this event is for people to be inspired, to fall in love again, to be advocates for the landscape."
She’s particularly excited about the documentary White Earth by filmmaker J. Christian Jensen.
"It’s a really interesting sort of social side to an environmental issue that we think about a lot here in the west, which is oil and gas development. I just thought it was such a powerful film in that so many of its narrators were children and that thematically fit with our Tomorrow’s Voices program."
ACES’ Tomorrow’s Voices program works to strengthen the voice of local youth. Classes are held for high school students to cultivate a sense of activism and connection with the outdoors. Proceeds from the film fest go to the program.
Filmmaker Pete McBride says he hopes his short film raises awareness around water conservation.
"I’m not a hydrologist, I’m not a water lawyer, but I’ve been getting pretty handy with a camera, so I’d like to create artistic stories that tell the story of the river. Most people don’t know what’s happening, so if you tell a story in a compelling way with interesting footage, sometimes that helps push the needle with the public."
