2017 AWARD WINNERS

Best Young Filmmaker
Concrete Canvas

Best Very Short Film
Arrested (Again) 

Best Short Film
EXPIRED? Food Waste in America

Audience Choice Award
Soil Carbon Cowboys

Eleven short films that tell engaging and inspiring stories of people and communities around the world taking action to address the environmental challenges facing the Earth today. were selected for screening at the 2017 Earth Port Film Festival. The films are listed below in alphabetical order.

Congratulations to the film makers whose films were selected and thanks to everyone who submitted!

A Passion of Gold and Fire (Sébastien Pins)
Belgium (6 min)

A beekeeper shares his worries about the future of his apiary school. A passion of gold and fire which definitely helps our environment to keep on living.

Arrested (Again) (Dan Goldes)
USA (4 min)

Activist Karen Topakian has been arrested dozens of times for using nonviolent civil disobedience to protest nuclear proliferation, human rights abuses, environmental issues, and war. What drives her to repeatedly put her body on the line?

In turn lighthearted and moving, Karen’s story speaks to the need for Americans, now more than ever, to exercise this important First Amendment right.

Karen is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Greenpeace, Inc. She began protesting in New York City and her native Rhode Island as well as the greater New England area, and now lives in San Francisco, with her wife, Peg Stevenson.

Concrete Canvas (The Factory)
USA (5 min)

Public art is integral to the empowerment of urban communities. Artists and city servants come together to explore how urban art grants agency to the disenfranchised.

Carbon Funk (Maui Huliau)
USA (5 min)

This music video parody of the popular Uptown Funk by Mark Rowson and Bruno Mars, uses musical satire to share the realities of climate change and climate change denial in the US today and how we all have a role in changing this reality.

This film was created by three students in the Huliau Environmental Filmmaking Club on Maui.

EXPIRED? Food Waste in America (Rebecca Richman Cohen)
USA (5 min)

EXPIRED? Food Waste in America is a short film that explores how misleading date labels on food products contribute to the 160 billion pounds of food wasted in America each year.

Life & Sand (Simon Mendes)
USA (11 min)

Why would a person make art that intentionally disappears? Life & Sand follows New York City sculptor/designer G. Augustine Lynas as he creates his ephemeral art in a day on the beach. Intercut with sculpting, we get a window into the poetic mind of this creative, playful, and philosophical soul, conscious of every grain of sand he touches.

This film explores the symbolism of ephemeral art, human impermanence, the cycle of life and the importance of protecting the natural world.

Peak Phosphorus (Michael Mehring)
Switzerland (3 min)

Before we run out of gas, we will have no more phosphor for industrial agriculture. No fertilizer no crops! And in 300 years meatware is history…

Soil Carbon Cowboys (Peter Byck)
USA (12 min)

Many people talk about the cattle business as a big environmental problem. Cattle, when properly grazed, offer solutions to soil health, animal health, human health, water issues and food nutrition. It’s a brave new world, and it’s below our feet.

The Call from the Sea (Taylor McNulty)
USA (15 min)

What is the ocean saying if we could hear its voice? This is the question that brought me from Florida to live with the Bajau in Indonesia. As a filmmaker, I wanted to share the life of people who live intimately with the sea.

The Bajau are a sea nomadic group who have lived on the ocean for centuries. I wanted to see the ocean through their eyes and hear the ocean’s voice.

“The Call from the Sea” addresses the future of our oceans and what we are leaving behind. It is a personal and poetic story about life as a Bajau and how our actions affect their world, ten thousand miles away.

You Can Build A Garden (Mike Pedelty)
USA (2 min)

A fun, entertaining and campy music video about raingardens.

We Save Land (Georgina Hurcombe)
United Kingdom (5 min)

We Save Land depicts the heartwarming story of a young child whose adventures in the rolling open spaces of their home come to an abrupt halt, due to over-development and urban sprawl.

With this eye-catching and thought-provoking short animated film, Summit Land Conservancy and LoveLove Films hope to garner enough support from environmentally-aware audiences around the world to continue to spread the message of land and wildlife conservation, and the importance of preserving natural habitats for future generations.