Wild and Scenic is smart and funny

Ride a bike, see a movie. Photo: blog.nycewheels.com.

Last night I had the great privilege to attend the Wild and Scenic Film Festival here in my laid-back but happening hometown of Staunton, Va.

Sponsored by SYRCL, a California river protection group and supported by Grist magazine and a bunch of good corporate stewards, the festival is in its ninth year.

Their 2011 roster offers amazing movies profiling cool people doing fantastic things for the environment and communities, along with stories of beautiful places in nature that will take your breath away and some tips on energy and conservation.

You can check out their tour schedule to see if it’ll be in your neck of the woods. If so, it’s a family-friendly, tight program that’s well worth it.

The Good

I could go on and on about each film and what it inspired for me.

Like the one about youth award winner Varsha Vijay who is “mapping” the territory of Ecuadorian Indians to hear their stories and translate them not only by language, but also so that scientists and industrialists and ordinary folks can hear the whole people behind the story of their lives and cultures.

Or the one about this RAVE of nature photographers who move into a wilderness area for ten short days to bring back the kinds of photos that will speak to the hearts and minds of those of us who don’t go to these far-flung places. This short helps promote awareness of how precious nature and wildlife are, and how they need to be protected. The photos they got are brilliant. Truly took my breath away.

Or the very short film of migrating birds flocking and dispersing as a lone eagle sat perched in their midst. Like watching a poem.

And then there were a bunch of fun shorts a la Wallace and Gromit by Animal Planet to teach viewers in funny animations how we can use less to make a better world. I love this one about lower-energy light bulbs.

The bad and the ugly

Contrasted against this beauty were agonizing stories of the coal and natural gas industry, their mining access (I won’t call them rights) and how we’re all in line to be injured by their operations since we’re all linked by the water that flows across continents and past national frontiers into our very own watersheds, wherever we are.

Not only were the mining and drilling practices bad and the sights ugly — the earth stripped bare with fetid pools of toxicity in its wake — but the stories of the lives already touched by these industries were heartbreaking.

Whose land will Big Oil and Gas and Big Coal claim next? Yours?

Awakenings

It’s time for us all to get our heart and mind spaces to a place where we’re aware, united and engaged with this world at a level where we act out of the deeper strands of meaning to protect and honor our surroundings, and not just to consume natural resources with mindless abandon.

A film series like this can’t help but inspire. See it, and refill your cup.

–Lindsay Curren, Lindsay’s List

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