Earth Day, April 22, is a global day of action to build and activate movement that embraces nature and its values. This year's theme is Protect our Species, highlighting the accelerating rate of extinction of millions of species in our world and the causes and consequences of this phenomenon.
"If we do not act now, extinction may be humanity's most enduring legacy."
Education and awareness are the first steps to understanding and solving any issue. Films for the Planet encourages you to learn more through its Metamorphic Convergence online streaming film series starting on April 10. Metamorphic Convergence - A Journey of Planetary Stewardship is a streaming film series that shines a light on the path from the present to the future, while weaving together regenerative solutions and fresh perspectives from artists, scientists, activists, authors and philosophers. Through poetic imagery, visual meditation and timely interviews, the series delves into how our environmental crisis is an opportunity for radical personal and planetary transformation. Artists and filmmakers guide us on a journey to reconcile what they perceive as a crossroads for humanity.
Film for the Planet's Metamorphic Convergence April Line Up
Register for the event April 10th through May 12, we will be featuring 6+ FREE film streams and “convergent movement maker” interviews all of which will be accompanied by online group interactions throughout the event. Event subscribers will receive mail reminders as films and interviews become available. We will be featuring FREE viewings of the film Metamorphosis April 11 -15, prior to the official theatrical and video on-demand release April 16.
- April 10: Metamorphosis - Catch the podcast interview with award winning filmmakers Velcro Ripper and Nova Ami and enjoy FREE viewings of Metamorphosis April 11 - 15, prior to the official theatrical and video on-demand release April 16.
- April 13: Living in Future's Past - by Director Susan Kucera and Academy Award winning producer/narrator Jeff Bridges. Catch the interview with Dr. David Korten best-selling author, political activist, former professor at Harvard Business School, and co-founder, YES! magazine and Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, author and founder of Creation Spirituality. The interview was recorded for the International Golden Rule Day 24-hour broadcast.
- April 16: Albatross - by internationally acclaimed artist Chris Jordan
- April 19: Living Soil - directed by Chelsea Myers and Tiny Attic Productions. Films for the Planet is featuring additional free streams of Unbroken Ground, The Regenerative Secret, The Soil and Compost Story, as well as content from the Savory Institute. Catch the interview with Ryland Engelhart, co-founder, Kiss the Ground and Josh Whiton, founder, MakeSoil.org
Starting on April 10, the first film to be featured is Metamorphosis. Catch the April 10 podcast interview with award-winning filmmakers Velcro Ripper and Nova Ami as we explore the metamorphosis symbolism for humanity and the world during this time of epic transition. Learn how the documentary is bringing people together through its community workshops, and find out how you can be part of the Metamorphosis story and conversation. As part of our April film streaming program, we will be featuring FREE viewings of the film April 11 - 15, prior to the official theatrical and video on-demand release April 16.
Film Synopsis Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper’s film Metamorphosis takes the pulse of our earth and bears witness to a moment of profound change: the loss of one world, and the birth of another. Metamorphosis captures the true scale of the global environmental crisis. Forest fires consume communities, species vanish, and entire ecosystems collapse. Economic growth, tied to increased speed of resource extraction, has created a machine with the capacity to destroy all life. But this crisis is also an opportunity for transformation.
About the Filmmakers Nova Ami creates socially relevant, thought-provoking films that inspire, educate, and empower. Her work has screened at international festivals including Hot Docs and IDFA and has been broadcast on BBC, CBC, CTV, Super Channel, Vision TV, and SBS Australia. She directed the documentaries Say I Do (CTV, Vision TV), Secrets (CBC’s The Passionate Eye) and Peacing it Together (Red Storm Productions) and was a producer on Occupy Love (Super Channel, Free Speech TV) and Army of One (BBC, CBC, SBS Australia). She was host, director and writer on the technology and innovation television series The Leading Edge (Knowledge Network) and was host and segment producer of GVTV, a series about urban issues in Vancouver. She has a master’s degree in Media Studies from the New School.
Velcrow Ripper creates powerful, cinematic feature documentaries that deal with the central issues of our times. His epic Fierce Light Trilogy began with Scared Sacred, winner of the 2005 Genie Award for best feature documentary, continued with 2008’s award-winning Fierce Light and concluded with Occupy Love (2013). His first feature-length documentary, Bones of the Forest (1995, co-directed with Heather Frise) won nine awards, including Best of the Festival at Hot Docs and the 1996 Genie for best feature doc. He is well known for his award-winning sound design of such films as The Corporation (Best Sound, Leo Awards) and A Place Called Chiapas (Best Sound, Hot Docs, Leo Awards). Metamorphosis is his sixth feature film.
On April 13 we spotlight Living in Future's Past by Director Susan Kucera and Academy Award winning producer/narrator Jeff Bridges. Catch the interview with Dr. David Korten best-selling author, political activist, former professor at Harvard Business School and co-founder, YES! magazine, and Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, author and founder of Creation Spirituality. Get ready to shift your frame from individual “me” to the collective “we” as we discover earth as a super organism that utilizes cooperative self-organization to create and maintain the conditions essential to our existence as interconnected living beings on an immensely beautiful planet. The interview was recorded for the International Golden Rule Day 24-hour broadcast.
Film Synopsis In this highly acclaimed, beautifully photographed tour de force of original thinking, Academy Award winner, Jeff Bridges shares the screen with scientists, profound thinkers and a dazzling array of Earth’s living creatures to reveal eye-opening concepts about ourselves and our past, providing fresh insights into our subconscious motivations and their unintended consequences.
Living in Future's Past shows how no one can predict how major changes might emerge from the spontaneous actions of many. How energy takes many forms as it moves through and animates everything. How, as we come to understand our true connection to all there is, we will need to redefine our expectations, not as what we will lose, but what we might gain by preparing for something different.
About the Filmmakers Academy Award Winner Jeff Bridges and Director Susan Kucera collaborated to bring Living in the Future’s Past to the screen. Susan is director, cinematographer and editor of the film which is also produced, narrated by and features Jeff Bridges.
On April 16 we unveil Albatross by internationally acclaimed artist Chris Jordan.
Film Synopsis In the heart of the great Pacific, a story is taking place that may change the way you see everything. The journey of Albatross began in 2008 as a collaboration with Chris Jordan's friend, activist/photographer Manuel Maqueda. Studying the newly-emerging issue of ocean plastic pollution, they learned of a stunning environmental tragedy taking place on a tiny atoll in the center of the vast North Pacific Ocean. They immediately began planning an expedition there, and on their first trip to Midway Island in September of 2009, they and their team photographed and filmed thousands of young albatrosses that lay dead on the ground, their stomachs filled with plastic. The experience was devastating, not only for what it meant for the suffering of the birds, but also for what it reflected back about the destructive power of our culture of mass consumption and humanity's damaged relationship with the living world. The making of Albatross was a eight-year labor of love that Chris Jordan has offered as a gift to the world, as a gesture of trust in doing the right thing for its own sake. With these principles in mind, Albatross is offered as a free public artwork.
About the Filmmaker Director, Writer and Editor Chris Jordan is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work explores contemporary mass culture from multiple perspectives, connecting the viewer viscerally to the enormity and power of humanity’s collective unconscious. Edge-walking the lines between beauty and horror, abstraction and representation, the near and the far, the visible and the invisible, his works challenge us to look both inward and outward at the complex landscapes of our collective choices. His work reaches an increasingly broad audience through his exhibitions, books, website, interviews on radio and television, and speaking engagements and school visits all over the world.
April 19: Living Soil, directed by Chelsea Myers and Tiny Attic Productions, captures the background of the current soil health movement and its momentum, beginning with images of the Dust Bowl which transition to personal experiences of innovative women and men who are managing their land to enhance soil health. We are featuring additional free streams of Unbroken Ground, The Regenerative Secret, The Soil and Compost Story, as well as content from the Savory Institute. Catch our interview with Ryland Engelhart, co-founder at Kiss the Ground and Josh Whiton, founder of MakeSoil.org.
Film Synopsis Our soils support 95 percent of all food production, and by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us as much food as we have consumed in the last 500 years. They filter our water. They are one of our most cost-effective reservoirs for sequestering carbon. They are our foundation for biodiversity. And they are vibrantly alive, teeming with 10,000 pounds of biological life in every acre. Yet in the last 150 years, we’ve lost half of the basic building block that makes soil productive. The societal and environmental costs of soil loss and degradation in the United States alone are now estimated to be as high as $85 billion every single year. Like any relationship, our living soil needs our tenderness. It’s time we changed everything we thought we knew about soil. Living Soil was directed by Chelsea Myers of Tiny Attic Productions and produced by the Soil Health Institute through the generous support of The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation.
About the Filmmakers Since founding Tiny Attic, a video production company, Chelsea Myers has evolved as a visual storyteller for a diverse range of projects and clients. Her prowess as a director, producer, editor, illustrator, cinematographer, and animator, along with a fiercely creative spirit enable her to pursue meaningful work regionally and around the world. Tiny Attic Productions,LLC. was launched after a creative spark in a small attic in Columbia, Missouri during the fall of 2012. Its professionals document real moments and real people whose stories enrich our lives.
Ryland Engelhart is the Mission Fulfillment Officer and co-owner of Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre. He is a co-founder of Kiss The Ground, a non-profit that educates and advocates about the connection between soil, human, and planetary health. He is also a co-creator of the award-winning, transformational documentary film, “May I Be Frank.” He is an entrepreneur and activist, using his restaurants as a platform to inspire more "gratitude" into our culture. He speaks on sacred commerce, tools for building community, and regeneration.
Josh Whiton Josh Whiton is a serial impact entrepreneur blending technology and business with active care for the planet. His companies, projects, and planetary interventions serve to harmonize society with nature, catalyze a regenerative economy, and elevate human consciousness. Projects include the transit-tech company TransLoc, for which he was named a Champion of Change by the White House. TransLoc was #5 on Fast Company's 2017 list of the most innovative companies in transportation, right alongside Uber and Tesla, and was recently acquired by the Ford Motor Company. Josh also co-founded one of the first urban farms in the southeastern United States, helping thousands of people each year to participate in a more beautiful food system. His latest intervention is MakeSoil.org. Josh's writings can be found on this website and on Medium.
Register for the event April 10th through May 12, Films for the Planet will be featuring 6+ FREE film streams and “convergent movement maker” interviews all of which will be accompanied by online group interactions throughout the event. Event subscribers will receive mail reminders as films and interviews become available. In addition, we will be featuring FREE viewings of the film Metamorphosis April 11 - 15, prior to the official theatrical and video on-demand release April 16.
Films for the Planet encourages you to use your social network for social good this Earth Month.
Credits:
Created with images by Andrea Sonda - "untitled image" • Max McKinnon - "untitled image" • Helena Lopes - "Golden Hug" • Pexels - "astronomy constellation dark"