Ojai Film Festival: Focus Earth

09/06/2022

11:11

12/04/2012

We are already planning for next year's Ojai Film Festival Focus Earth. We have some exciting things on the horizon and hope you will join us next year to see what we have in store for you. And don't forget to share with your friends!

www.ojaifilmfestival.com

(Photo taken outside Chaparral theatre with Rebecca and Josh Tickell creators, directors and producers of the films Fuel and The Big Fix)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg_fpr6XBFM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upTCSSkxlxE

10/29/2012

Jamie Fleming did an amazing job putting this film festival together. Having organized events in the past, I can tell you that it takes countless hours of energy and time to put an event like this together and make it seem flawless. Jamie made our jobs so incredibly easy by bringing together an amazing team of hard working and talented people. Thank you Jamie for all your hard work and your dedication to this film festival. It was truly an honor to serve with you at this festival.

10/29/2012

Great attendance for the film Chasing Ice.

In the spring of 2005, National Geographic photographer James Balog headed to the Arctic on a tricky assignment: to capture images to help tell the story of the Earth's changing climate. Even with a scientific upbringing, Balog had been a skeptic about climate change and a cynic about the nature of academic research. But that first trip north opened his eyes to the biggest story in human history and sparked a challenge within him that would put his career and his very well-being at risk.

Chasing Ice is the story of one man's mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months of that first trip to Iceland, the photographer conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. With a band of young adventurers in tow, Balog began deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers.

As the debate polarizes America and the intensity of natural disasters ramps up globally, Balog finds himself at the end of his tether. Battling untested technology in subzero conditions, he comes face to face with his own mortality. It takes years for Balog to see the fruits of his labor. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Chasing Ice depicts a photographer trying to deliver evidence and hope to our carbon-powered planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZTMVNBjc4

http://www.chasingice.com/

10/29/2012

Panelists for food and sustainability. Karen Schmidt, Executive Dir. of SOAR; Dulainie Ellis, Co Chair Ojai Valley Green Coalition Food Council; Andrew Grace, Filmmaker; Kris Young, Founder of Ojai Locavore Project and John Fonteyn, local Ojai farmer. For films Eating Alabama and Love and Gratitude.

10/29/2012

Andrew Grace filmmaker for Eating Alabama speaks to a very attentive and impressed audience.

10/29/2012

Andrew Grace is a wonderful filmmaker created this very personal and heartwarming film for Eating Alabama that will be sure to bring you hope about our future. He and his wife embarked on a journey to live completely off local produce and food sources in Alabama. Was he successful? Watch his film and find out.

We screened his film at the Ojai Film Festival Focus Earth on Sunday to a very impressed and inspired audience.

The trailer for the forthcoming feature documentary "Eating Alabama." Find out more at www.eatingalabama.com Very proud to announce the World Premiere at SXSW in…

10/29/2012

To learn more about UCSB Blue Horizon Program, which produced environmental films check out their website at http://www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu/emi/blue-horizons. I was personally very impressed with the quality of films these students produced and showed at the Ojai Film Festival including No Otter Zone as well as Eviction Day.

10/29/2012

UCSB Blue Horizon Program screened No Otter Zone and Eviction Day. The students did an amazing job on these films.

10/29/2012

Paul Jenkin from Surfrider Foundation along with me and Tamara Henry of GreenT TV. Paul came to support and present the film One Beach, which was a good film about ways we can do our part to clean up our beaches.

10/29/2012

There was a great Q & A after Minds in Water on Friday night with the director of the film Justin Krumb.

One of the questions I posed as ongoing efforts to deal with the killings of dolphins in Japan had to do with diplomacy and having a better understanding as to why these dolphins are being killed by the fishermen in Japan in the first place and what are the alternatives.