(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – Project Native, a horticultural farm and wildlife sanctuary growing native plants in Southern Berkshire County, will present its 2nd annual Environmental Film Festival, Sunday, March 25, 2012, free to the public, at the newly all-digital Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington.
Films on a variety of topics, from 90-minute features to a series of short films for children, will be screened, including American Meat, The Clean Bin Project, The Economics of Happiness, On Coal River, and Urban Roots.
American Meat is a feature documentary about a grass-roots revolution in sustainable farming starring Virginia’s Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farms, explains how America arrived at its current industrial system, and shows the feedlots and confinement houses, not through hidden cameras but through the eyes of the farmers who live and work there. The story shifts to the burgeoning movement of farmers, chefs and everyday folks, influenced by Salatin’s ideas, who might just change everything about the way meat reaches the American table.
The Clean Bin Project is a multiple-award winning, festival favorite that has been inspiring audiences across North America. The film follows the story of a couple who ask the question “What can an individual do?” Young couple Grant and Jen let viewers into their lives for 1 year, sharing moments of humor, struggle, and hope as they compete with each other to give up consumerism and produce zero garbage. Described as a beautiful combination of An Inconvenient Truth and Super Size Me, The Clean Bin Project features laugh out loud moments, stop motion animations, and captivating interviews with TED lecturers Chris Jordan and Captain Charles Moore.
The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions: while government and Big Business push for a globalized economy based on high technology and increased trade, people all over the world are working from the grassroots to nurture smaller scale, ecological, local economies. Viewers hear from a chorus of voices from six continents including Samdhong Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of Tibet’s government in exile, Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, David Korten and Zac Goldsmith.
Coal River Valley is a community surrounded by lush mountains and a looming toxic threat. On Coal River follows a former coal miner and his neighbors in a David-and-Goliath struggle for the future of their valley, their children, and life as they know it.
Urban Roots follows the urban farming phenomenon in Detroit.