“Nature’s Big Year” provides a glimpse into unexpected shifts in wildlife behavior during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. Here a photographer documents migrating snow geese crowded on a Canadian lake. See “Nature’s Big Year” at the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership’s Environmental Film Festival on April 16.
By Sally High | Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership
The Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership (GGP) 2.5will present its eighth Environmental Film Festival on April 16. The GGP is partnering with the Colorado Environmental Film Festival (CEFF) to bring another CEFF Caravan to Pagosa Springs. This collaboration ensures that films are highly acclaimed and fresh to the 2022 film festival circuit.
The Tennyson Event Center will host the Environmental Film Festival with the GGP from 2 to 8 p.m. Guests will enjoy four feature-length films and two short films. Wristbands can be purchased at www.pagosagreen.org. Proceeds go to the GGP’s operations, including educational activities and landscaping. Each $20 wristband allows a guest to come and go.
Here’s the lineup of the 2022 films:
“Reflection: A Walk with Water”is a California production, a “pilgrimage” with water that traces California’s water crisis and our shared climate change reality. The filmmaker and other water pilgrims travel the 200-mile length of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The GGP hopes that their journey inspires conversation about our local water situation.
“In My Backyard’ illustrates the burgeoning interest in backyard vegetable gardening and various creative solutions to challenges of urban gardening. The Canadian production documents individuals changing their communities through local food production. New paradigms are explored and implemented by people just like you and me.
“12th Hour” delves into humanity’s psychological resistance to facing ecological change. Changes in humanity’s collective thinking are needed to avoid an irreversible cataclysm, but how do we do that? Much of our population currently lives with hopeful delusions about climate change. With Pagosa thought leaders gathered for the GGP’s film fest, let’s talk.
“Soil Care is Climate Repair” is a Colorado kid-produced short film that lifts our spirits and reminds us how doable climate solutions really are — if we can agree on next steps.
“Lynx: Shadows of the Forest” examines lynx in Colorado since their reintroduction in 1999. The big-footed felines illustrate a success story of Colorado’s support for biodiversity and value of wildlife. Colorado Parks and Wildlife helped produce this short film.
“Nature’s Big Year” is an uplifting Canadian production that acquaints us with wildlife in Canada, the USA and Britain. It’s March 2020 and the world hits pause. Nature reboots. Wildlife scientists reveal astounding discoveries from the year of the pandemic. This ambitious and provocative film explores the lockdown’s silver lining — many species benefit immediately when humanity slows down.
A wristband also gets each guest a gourmet stand-up supper. Kathy Keyes, chef and GGP founder, is cooking up a menu using locally grown produce. Proceeds from a cash bar add to the nonprofit GGP’s operating funds. The GGP is “growing food and community with local energy.”
