The inaugural Colorado Environmental Film Festival Caravan in Pagosa Springs is scheduled Friday and Saturday as a fundraiser for the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership.
Sally High, an event coordinator, said the intention is to make the festival an annual event.
Fourteen films, from the festival of the same name in Golden, will be screened, some of them more than once.
A feature-length documentary, “Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time,” won a 2012 Emmy Award for Best Historical Documentary. The film shows how Leopold shaped and influenced the modern environmental movement.
“Fire Wars” looks at forest management and fire policy through the experiences of the Arrowhead Hotshots, one of the original elite firefighting crews formed by the National Park Service in 1981.
All firefighters, wildland and otherwise, and Forest Service personnel are invited to view the film as guests of the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership.
Three films tackle different aspects of Colorado rivers, including “Watershed: Exploring a New Ethic for a New West” produced by Robert Redford; a three-minute film in Spanish uses art to present facts about water; and concern about mining uranium in the Grand Canyon is the focus of a six-minute film.
Films also tackle issues overseas.
The rise of China’s first major grass-roots environmental movement is chronicled in “Waking the Green Tiger: A Green Movement Rises in China.” The campaign successfully stopped a dam project on the Upper Yangtze River.
“Irish Folk Furniture,” which won a Sundance Film Festival award for animation, describes in eight minutes the repurposing of abandoned furniture in rural Ireland.
Proceeds from the festival will be used by the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership to install three greenhouses as part of an environmental-education center in the west end of Centennial Park.
One greenhouse will be dedicated to youth education, another to commercial gardening and the third to community gardening.
Film screenings will be held at the historic Liberty Theatre in downtown Pagosa Springs. Receptions, discussions, an art exhibit and a silent auction also are scheduled.
Information about the festival and tickets for individual film sessions or two-day wristbands are available at www.pagosagreen.org.
daler@durangoherald.com
If you go
The Colorado Environmental Film Festival Caravan will be featured Friday and Saturday at Liberty Theatre in Pagosa Springs. For a schedule and ticket information, visit www.pagosagreen.org.
