Wild & Scenic Film Festival comes to the Eastside

November 16, 2012

For the sixth straight year, the Wild & Scenic Film Festival comes to the Eastside, thanks to the Friends of the Inyo.

The films, collected by the South Yuba Rivers Citizens League (SYRCL), will show in Mammoth at the Edison Theatre on Friday, Nov. 30; in Bishop at the Cerro Coso Community College on Saturday, Dec. 1, and in Lone Pine at the Lone Pine Film Museum on Thursday, Dec. 6. All showings begin at 7 p.m. and the $10 ticket prize includes a raffle entry.

The festival brings together two programs of movies about environmental activism and outdoor exploration, ranging in length from two minutes to 39 minutes.

One film program will screen in Mammoth Lakes, and the second film program will screen in Bishop and Lone Pine.

“I can tell a lot of thought went into selecting the films,” said Lori Van Laanen, Wild & Scenic Film Festival On Tour Manager.

“Both programs have a wonderful mix of inspiring stories, adventure, amazing cinematography, and informative films. You have good anchor films and the halves of the programs are well balanced.”

“Return Flight: Restoring the Bald Eagle to the Channel Islands” will be shown in all venues.
Once an important avian predator in the Channel Islands, the bald eagles disappeared due to egg collecting, hunting, and DDT contamination.

This short film, shot in Channel Islands National Park off the Southern California coast, shows how a dedicated team has worked for decades to bring the bald eagle back.

Mammoth’s feature film will be “Miss South Pacific: Beauty and the Beast,” a film about the 2009-10 Miss South Pacific Pageant in Suva, Fiji, which addressed the theme of climate change and its impact on Pacific Island countries.

The Queens implore judges, spectators, and the world at large to reduce global carbon emission to save their homes.

Also in the Mammoth line-up is “A Liter of Light,” a two-minute film that documents a foundation’s project to light up a poor neighborhood through the efforts of a local man who installs hundreds of solar-powered light bulbs made from old plastic soda bottles filled with water and bleach, in his neighbor’s houses.

The film, “A Skier’s Journey: Friends of Shames,” is about skiers in Northern British Columbia buying a local ski hill as a community co-operative after it ran out of money and closed.

Sound familiar, June Lakers?

Another film, “ Finding Their Way,” is a six-minute short about fracking in a community park.

“Second Nature: The Biomimicry Evolution,” follows Time magazine “Hero of the Environment” Janine Benyus as she illustrates how organisms in nature can teach us to be more sustainable engineers, chemists, architects, and business

“Seasons: Winter” and “Eagle Among the Swarm” close the venue with visuals of tens of thousands of Pacific Dunlin birds during the season’s peak in Boundary Bay, British Columbia. The film won Best Picture at the Victoria Seabird Film Festival. 

Bishop and Lone Pine’s centerpiece film is “Marion Stoddart: The Work of 1000,” which tells the story of Marion Stoddart, who takes on big business, politicians, and public skepticism to save a dying river.

Also in Bishop and Lone Pine are “The Craziest Idea,” about the world’s biggest dam removal on Washington’s Elwha River; “A Skier’s Journey: Argentina,” documenting a road trip through some of Argentina’s lesser known ski locations; “Weed War,” about Patagonia fly fishing rep and goat rancher Mark Harbaugh and his obsession to do his part for the environment using weed-eating goats to control noxious invaders in the Rocky Mountains; “Towers of the Enned,” which follows three climbers across the roadless, windswept deserts of northeastern Chad in search of a promised land with countless unclimbed sandstone towers; “The New Environmentalists: The Grid,” about how German community activists responded to the Chernobyl nuclear accident by creating the country’s first cooperatively owned, renewable power company; and “Dark Side of the Lens,” Mickey Smith’s “visual poem” of life as an ocean based photographer of Ireland’s west coast.

Festival tickets can be purchased at the door or in advance at The Booky Joint in Mammoth, Wilson’s Eastside Sports in Bishop, or the Lone Pine Film Museum For more information, visit www.friendsoftheinyo.org or call 760- 873-6500.