In early 2007, Sonoma Valley resident Justine Ashton was enthralled enough with the award winning, “An Inconvenient Truth” with the ex-Vice President, and current environmental crusader, Al Gore, that she found herself watching the documentary on the environmental state of our world in rapt attention for a third time. But it took her five year old granddaughter to snap her out of her frozen state of disbelief and get her off the sofa, when she asked what her grandmother was going to do about the situations that they were watching.
Justine Ashton didn’t simply adjust the thermostat and dowse a few unnecessary lights around the house; she started an ecological film festival. The inaugural Sonoma Environmental Film Festival in January of 2008 drew 250 submissions and 500 attendees. The second annual Sonoma Environmental Film Festival, which runs January 22-25, 2009, has received 600 entries worldwide. While the film festival circuit is an ever expanding competitive world (over 3,000 currently), ecological cinema and its supporting festivals are getting attention and attendance growth given the viability of the platform in spreading ecological awareness.
Ashton, who has been a contributor to another film festival in Sonoma Valley, the Wine Country Film Festival since its inception in 1986, says that since 1990 the Wine Country Film Festival has maintained a category for green cinema. But the category has grown so significantly, that it can now stand on its own as an independent festival. Ashton feels strongly that every day should be “Earth Day”, and that we each need to feel both the responsibility and the pleasure from embracing the daily opportunity to have an impact through every choice we make, and everything we do.
Not everything is shock cinema and depressing though; there are also films that celebrate the land and its people. Some of the topics to be found this year will be focused on the ocean, renewable energy, and organic agriculture. And while many of the films target subjects with world-wide impact, there are a few films at this year’s Sonoma Environmental Film Festival which will focus on subjects right here in the San Francisco bay area:
- “Hidden Bounty of Marin” chronicles the daily lives of those working the land: cheese makers, vegetable growers, oyster farmers, and sheep and cattle ranchers
- “Food Fight,” follows the rise of the organic food shift and sustainable farming, and highlights the global corporate food business
- “River of Renewal” studies the Klamath River Basin’s fight between area commercial fisherman, Native Indians, and farmers
- “Call it Home: Searching for Truth on Bolinas Lagoon,” illuminates the environmental political struggles of the west Marin lagoon and its silt settlement issues
For more information on the second annual Sonoma Environmental Film Festival, January 22-25, to be held at the Sonoma Valley Women’s Club, check online:www.seff.us
