Film Screenings: Green Fire and Living Downstream

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time

Sunday, November 25, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time is the first feature length documentary film ever made about famed conservationist Aldo Leopold. The film explores Aldo Leopold’s life in the early part of the twentieth century and the many ways his land ethic idea continues to be applied all over the world today. 

The film shares highlights from Leopold’s life and extraordinary career, explaining how he shaped conservation in the twentieth century and still inspires people today. Although probably best known as the author of the conservation classic A Sand County Almanac, Leopold is also renowned for his work as an educator, philosopher, forester, ecologist, and wilderness advocate.

Living Downstream

Sunday, December 16, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

Living Downstream is an eloquent feature length documentary that charts the life and work of biologist, author, cancer survivor and cancer prevention advocate, Sandra Steingraber. Living Downstream is based on Sandra’s book of the same name, and, like the book, documents the growing body of scientific evidence that links human health with the health of our environment. Part scientific exploration, part personal journey, the film follows Sandra during a pivotal year in her life: as a biologist and author, speaking to groups across North America about cancer prevention; and as a cancer survivor, when she receives ambiguous results from a cancer screening test. The film captures this movement between the scientific and the personal, which is also a hallmark of Sandra’s work.

Raised in small town Illinois, cancer seems to run in Sandra’s family. Sandra was diagnosed with bladder cancer when she was just 20 years old. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when Sandra was in high school. Many of her close family members have also struggled with the disease, and her aunt died of the same form of cancer that Sandra had.  But while cancer runs in her family, she cannot say that it runs in her genes. Sandra is adopted.  Thus, Sandra asks what else families have in common besides DNA. The answer is all around us: our environment.

The film closely follows the trajectory of Sandra’s life and work, but it also tracks the important progress of scientific investigation on environmental links to cancer and other health ailments. Several experts in the fields of toxicology and cancer research make important cameo appearances in the film, highlighting their own findings on such pervasive chemicals as atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, and industrial compounds, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Their work further illuminates the significant connection between a healthy environment and human health.

The film series is cosponsored by Audubon Connecticut.

Film Screenings: A Sense of Wonder, The City Dark, and Green Fire

A Sense of Wonder

Sunday, September 23, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring, the 2012-2013 film series starts with A Sense of Wonder.

When pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, the backlash from her critics thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Despite her love of privacy, Carson’s convictions and her foresight regarding the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into a very public and controversial role.

Using many of Miss Carson’s own words, Kaiulani Lee embodies this extraordinary woman in a documentary style film, which depicts Carson in the final year of her life. Struggling with cancer, Carson recounts with both humor and anger the attacks by the chemical industry, the government, and the press as she focuses her limited energy to get her message to Congress and the American people.

The City Dark

Sunday, October 28, 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

The City Dark chronicles the disappearance of darkness. The film follows filmmaker (and amateur astronomer) Ian Cheney, who moves to New York City from Maine and discovers an urban sky almost completely devoid of stars. Posing a deceptively simple question—“What do we lose, when we lose the night?”—the film leads viewers on a quest to understand how light pollution affects people and the planet. In six chapters weaving together cutting-edge science with personal, meditative sequences reflecting on the human relationship to the sky, The City Dark shines new light on the meaning of the dark. 

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time

Saturday, November 25, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time is the first feature length documentary film ever made about famed conservationist Aldo Leopold. The film explores Aldo Leopold’s life in the early part of the twentieth century and the many ways his land ethic idea continues to be applied all over the world today. 

The film shares highlights from Leopold’s life and extraordinary career, explaining how he shaped conservation in the twentieth century and still inspires people today. Although probably best known as the author of the conservation classic A Sand County Almanac, Leopold is also renowned for his work as an educator, philosopher, forester, ecologist, and wilderness advocate.

The film series is cosponsored by Audubon Connecticut.

Film Screenings: Green Fire, Tapped, Living Downstream, and Ghost Bird at Peabody Museum and Blackstone Library

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time

Saturday, November 12, 1:00-3:30 p.m.

Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven

Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time is the first feature length documentary film ever made about famed conservationist Aldo Leopold. The film explores Aldo Leopold’s life in the early part of the twentieth century and the many ways his land ethic idea continues to be applied all over the world today. 

The film shares highlights from Leopold’s life and extraordinary career, explaining how he shaped conservation in the twentieth century and still inspires people today. Although probably best known as the author of the conservation classic A Sand County Almanac, Leopold is also renowned for his work as an educator, philosopher, forester, ecologist, and wilderness advocate.

Green Fire illustrates Leopold’s continuing influence by exploring current projects that connect people and land at the local level. The film portrays how Leopold’s vision of a community that cares about both people and land—his call for a land ethic—ties all of these modern conservation stories together and offers inspiration and insight for the future.

This film screening is part of the Quinnipiac River Watershed project.

Tapped

Sunday, November 27, 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig’s debut feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water.

Tapped is a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water.

From the plastic production to the ocean in which so many of these bottles end up, this inspiring documentary trails the path of the bottled water industry and the communities which were the unwitting chips on the table. This film is cosponsored by Audubon Connecticut.

Living Downstream

Friday, December 9, 7:00-8:00 p.m.

Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven

Living Downstream is an eloquent feature length documentary that charts the life and work of biologist, author, cancer survivor and cancer prevention advocate, Sandra Steingraber. 

Living Downstream is based on Sandra’s book of the same name, and, like the book, documents the growing body of scientific evidence that links human health with the health of our environment. 

This film screening is part of the Quinnipiac River Watershed project.

Ghost Bird

Sunday, December 18, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford

Set in a murky swamp overrun with birders, scientists, and reporters, Ghost Bird explores the limits of certainty, the seductive power of hope, and how one phantom woodpecker changed a sleepy Southern town forever.

In 2005, scientists announced that the Ivory-billed woodpecker, a species thought to be extinct for 60 years, had been found in the swamps of Eastern Arkansas. Millions of dollars poured in from the government while ornithologists and birders flooded the swamps to find the rare bird. Down the road, the town of Brinkley, Arkansas - itself on the brink of extinction – was transformed by the hope, commerce, and controversy surrounding their feathered friend. Now six years later, the woodpecker remains as elusive as ever. Ghost Bird brings the Ivory-bill’s blurry rediscovery into focus revealing our uneasy relationship with nature and the increasing uncertainty of our place within it.

This film is cosponsored by Audubon Connecticut.

(From the November, 2011 Newsletter)