Filmmakers

Call for submissions: Focus on Sustainability Film Festival

The second annual Focus on Sustainability Film Festival will return to York University in the winter semester of 2013 with a spotlight on the increasingly vital and complex topic of food.

In addition to feature films, panel discussions and prizes centred on food, the upcoming festival also gives local filmmakers in the York University community an opportunity to have their food-related film featured. Following the submission deadline, festival presenters will choose one prize-winning film to be highlighted and up to three runner-up films to be exhibited.

Submission Requirements:

  • York University enrolled (or previously enrolled) student in any department
  • Run time for films must not exceed 60 minutes
  • Films must be focused on any food related issue
  • Suggestions include: animal rights, agriculture, veganism/vegetarianism, local/global

The deadline is Jan. 10, 2013. E-mail submissions to Jessica Reeve, IRIS junior fellow, at jreeve@yorku.ca or bring it to 395 York Lanes, the office of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability.

Submissions must be in digital formats accompanied by a 250-word abstract, title and contact information.

This call for submission is brought to you by the Osgoode Environmental Law Society, the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability and the Climate Consortium for Research Action Integration.

For more information, contact Jessica Reeve at jreeve@yorku.ca.

UK Green Film Festival

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

LAUNCHING IN CARDIFF, LEEDS, LEICESTER, LONDON

& GLASGOW at the GFT

The UK Green Film Festival, launching in 2011, is a not-for-profit, national film festival showcasing films and filmmakers engaging with environmental and climate change themes. We’re not here to preach. We’re here to challenge, inspire, educate, learn and entertain.

The GFT will be showing GasLand, With Landscape in Mind, Plastic Planet, Planeat and The Pipe about Rossport’s resistance to the gas pipeline. 

 

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

Go to EcoArtScotland

ADM Tries to Take Down Funny Video; Big Business Has No Solutions; Now What?

  • ADM video still available here, here, and (for download and reposting) here; page here
  • Fake initiatives pages, with links to organizations seeking change on these issues
  • More information about last week’s website and videos
  • Contact: scurrilous@theyesmen.org, bportello@cinemalibrestudio.com

A legal complaint from agribusiness giant ADM has resulted in the removal from Youtube of a fake video of ADM’s CEO making over-honest pronouncements. (The video is still available here, here, and, for download and reposting, here.)

Last week, the filmmaking team behind The End of Poverty? partnered with the Yes Men to create a parallel, imaginary World Economic Forum in which world leaders came up with real solutions to poverty. The leaders seemed, in a < a href=”http://www.we-forum.org/en/events/AnnualMeeting2010/index.shtml”>series of videos, to be supporting a set of initiatives based on 10 Solutions to End Poverty, a petition for which the filmmakers are trying to get ten million signatures by the end of 2010.

Each of those initiatives pages has links to organizations that are fighting hard for change on these issues.

In contrast, the actual World Economic Forum ended Sunday with a profound lack of results, some seemingly satirical but all-too-real headlines (like Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein’s rumoured $100 million bonus), and one fruitless complaint to Youtube.

“If we can bail out bankers to the tune of trillions of dollars, surely we can solve poverty, which will just take a few structural changes, plus a whole lot less money,” said Beth Portello, the producer of The End of Poverty?

“All the crises we’re facing are rooted in massive inequality and poverty,” says Philippe Diaz, the film’s director. “If these leaders really wanted to make a difference, they would work towards ending poverty, however uncomfortable that might be for business.”

“It’s easier to remove funny videos from Youtube,” added Portello.