Wild & Scenic Film Festival Brings 5-Day Event to NorCal this Week
The Wild & Scenic Film Festival is returning to Northern California this week with a 5-day event in Grass Valley and Nevada City from January 16 – 20th. The event includes a robust schedule featuring 100+ films, workshops, visiting filmmaker and activist talks, family-friendly programs, art exhibitions and parties.
The event, being held in the area by the South Yuba River Citizens League, was created to inspire environmental activism and a love for nature–through film. Wild & Scenic shares an urgent call to action, encouraging festival-goers to learn more about what they can do to save our threatened planet. This event sits as the largest annual fundraiser for the South Yuba River Citizens League, which raise funds and awareness to recover California’s wild salmon and protect the Yuba River watershed.
The massive selection of films being featured at the event present a who’s-who of environmental filmmaking across the globe. And some films even feature Northern California stories:
After the Fire features residents of Sonoma Valley as they struggle to find their places in a community that has been reshaped overnight by the historic Northern California wildfires. Here is the trailer:
Hat Creek: A Wild Trout Legacy highlights how passionate anglers could come together to restore a stream and bring back an iconic fishery. More than that though, on Hat Creek a new concept for wild trout management was embraced – the idea that we can do without hatchery fish, that the ethic of catch and release is good for fish and anglers alike, and the idea that having a controlled set of regulations focused on wild trout could be successful. See the trailer:
Here are some more films highlighting NorCal:
Meadows – Yosemite Nature Notes
Steven M. Bumgardner | 2019 | 7 min
Yosemite National Park has over 3,000 meadows, which hold the greatest diversity of plant and animal species despite only making up 3% of the park. In just the past 150 years, people have negatively impacted these fragile ecosystems. Yosemite National Park, with the help of Yosemite Conservancy, is working hard to rehabilitate these meadows that are an important part of the park’s natural and cultural history.
California’s Watershed
James Thebaut | 2019 | 27 min
Created to place a spotlight and raise awareness within the general public and elected and public officials, California’s Watershed explores the critical social and ecological importance of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the far reaching national security consequences of its rapidly evolving demise. This film presents the dangerous impact of warming temperatures and climate change on the watershed and its importance in maintaining the long-term health and security needs of families, cities, businesses, farmers, and environment locally and globally.
Fighting Fire With Fire
Sinead Santich | 2018 | 3 min
In an effort to restore the role of Native people as land stewards and mitigate the threat of wildfires, UC-Davis professor Beth Rose Middleton Manning fires up a hands-on lesson in cultural burning. Tribal Chairman Ron Goode leads students in an immersive experience preparing the land, igniting the fire, and carrying out indigenous traditions that have restored California landscapes for centuries.
Not If But When: Wildfire Solutions
Radu Sava, Rebekah Hood-Sava | 2019 | 39 min
Wildfires are becoming a global phenomenon and California is one of the places hit the hardest because of its dry climate. Experts in the Sierra Nevada are taking on innovative solutions at an unprecedented scale and if they are successful, it could influence work around the world.
All That Remains
Eva Rendle | 2019 | 20 min
A year after deadly wildfires ravaged Northern California’s Wine Country, its vulnerable population of farmworkers, many of them undocumented, find themselves in a heightened state of insecurity and inequality. All That Remains is a portrait of the second responders and vineyard workers who are still dealing with the aftermath of the fires, long after the media has turned away.
For more information on Northern California Wild & Scenic Film Festival or to buy tickets to the event, go here.
