By Aryn Henning Nichols

The truth, inconvenient as it may be, is that we’ve got our work cut out for us if we want to save the world. The people on this planet need to learn (or relearn) how to be sustainable.

Organizers of the first Oneota Film Festival are taking a step forward on this monumental path. On January 22 and 23, the key word on Decorah’s Luther College Campus – even more than usual – is sustainability. The Oneota Film Festival (OFF) will screen more than 20 films highlighting food, energy, economies and life choices relating to sustainability. Ranging from 10 minutes to nearly two hours, the films will both entertain and educate about the interconnectivity of all that we live and consume.

Biodiesel, backyard chickens, the life of a paper cup, bald eagles and Iowa murals are just a few topics OFF will touch upon. The films will serve as catalysts in discussions about local sustainability initiatives and how communities and regions can develop and maintain a more sustainable local economy. Regional and local experts will lead the forums.

“Our hope is also that we can broaden the definition of sustainability and include more voices in the discussion,” says OFF executive director Kyrl Henderson. “It’s important for all of us to share a vision of a sustainable local economy based on helping each other in positive ways.”

OFF is sponsored by Luther College, Seed Savers Exchange, Decorah Regional Arts Council, and Winneshiek County Convention and Visitors Bureau. Luther will host the entire festival in different locales across campus. With the college’s efforts in green initiatives, it seems a great fit for a festival highlighting just that.

“We’re excited to be part of a new event that can carry Luther’s commitment to sustainability into the wider community, and use our facilities and energy to share the message,” says Dan Bellrichard, Luther College sustainability coordinator.

Students are also looking forward to relating their efforts at Luther to ones beyond the college borders.

“The film festival is going to be great for students. From the bike share program to eating local food in the cafeteria, the campus is working on and talking about sustainability all the time. The film festival will be a fantastic way for students to see how people around the world are practicing sustainability in exciting ways – from young people driving a vegetable oil-fueled truck to great kayaking spots around the continent to grassroots leaders fighting for water rights,” says Luther student and OFF volunteer Erin Lunde.

Lunde had a big hand in assisting OFF board member Kristin Torresdal in probably the most important task of a film festival: selecting the films! Torresdal and the rest of the board worked together to whittle the list down to their absolute favorites.

“I think that I can safely speak for everyone when I say that it was certainly a bit nerve-wracking but ultimately very exciting for all of us to be a part of the process of manipulating the list and watching our first Oneota Film Festival take shape,” Torresdal says. “We absolutely cannot WAIT to share these films with everyone who attends the festival!”

OFF activities will spill into the evening with partnered events planned for both Friday and Saturday night. Details can be found at www.oneotafilmfestival.org. Or for more information, you may contact OFF Director Ruth Jenkins at ruth@oneotafilmfestival.org.

“It’ll be a great winter activity,” Jenkins says. “We’re excited about warming everyone up in cold, late January with great films, interesting conversation, and new ways to better the world.”

Aryn Henning Nichols is happy Inspire(d) is a media sponsor for Oneota Film Festival. It’s going to be a truly great time!

Check out some of the films being shown at OFF!

King Corn  (50 min)
A feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm. 

Big River   (30 min)
Following up on their Peabody winning documentary, the King Corn boys are back.  For Big River, best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis have returned to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has sent to people and places downstream.  In a journey that spans the heartland to the Gulf of Mexico, Ian and Curt trade their combine for a canoe- and set out to see the big world their little acre of corn has touched.  On their trip, flashbacks to the pesticides they sprayed, the fertilizers they injected, and the soil they plowed now lead to new questions, explored by new experts in new places.  Half of Iowa’s topsoil, they learn, has been washed out to sea.  Fertilizer runoff has spawned a hypoxic “Dead Zone” in the Gulf.  And back at their acre, the herbicides they used are blamed for a cancer cluster that reaches all too close to home.

Tapped   (76 min)
Is access to drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce?  Stephanie Soechtig’s debut feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water.  From the producers of  Who Killed the Electric Car and I.O.U.S.A., this timely documentary is a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never become a commodity: our water.  From the plastic production to the ocean in which so many of these bottles end up, this inspiring documentary trails the path of the bottled water industry and the communities which were the uwitting chips on the table.  A powerful portrait of the lives affected by the bottled water industry, this revelatory film features those caught at the intersection of big business and the public’s right to water.

Fuel   (112 min)
With America so dependent on oil, filmmaker Joshua Tickell sets out to prove that biodiesel, made from vegetable oil, is a viable alternative. Although politicians and energy execs have done their best to quell it, the benefits of biodiesel are real. This documentary chronicles Tickell’s quest to popularize the untraditional fuel source, citing the environmental and economic advantages the country could reap by adopting it.

Seed Hunter   (60 min)
Our planet is heating up and one of the first casualties will be the crops that supply our food. Scientists are working overtime to find solutions including going back to the ancestral origins of our staple foods.  Seed Hunter will take you on a remarkable journey from the drought ravaged farms of Australia, to the heart of the Middle East, to the mountains of Tajikistan where charismatic Australian scientist Dr Ken Street – a real life version of Indiana Jones – and his team of ‘gene detectives’ hunt for plant genes that will help our food withstand the impact of 21st century global warming.  Along the way we meet farmers around the world who are struggling to grow crops in a climate that’s gone haywire, as well as scientists working at the front line of gene technology to save tomorrow’s food. At journey’s end, deep in the Arctic Circle, Ken deposits his bounty of seed in the newly constructed seed bank known as the ‘doomsday vault.’

Mad City Chickens    (81 min.)
Witness if you will Gallus Domesticus…the backyard chicken. A mere few pounds of feather, bone, and muscle; a creature regarded by many as a rather humorous, though not so intelligent agent of food production. And yet make note of a most singular phenomenon now taking shape across suburb and city.  From backyard eggs to the family’s new favorite pet, the urban chicken is forging a fresh place in the pecking order of human importance.  Mad City Chickens deftly weaves multiple stories and contextual issues on city chickens and their keepers in a non-linear fashion that one rarely sees in a documentary. From leading experts to urban newbies, experience the humor and heart of what’s fast becoming an international backyard chicken movement.

Paddle to Seattle: Journey through the Inside Passage  (87 min)
An independent documentary chronicling the progress of two intrepid adventurers paddling handmade wooden Pygmy kayaks from Alaska to Seattle. They navigated the 1,300-mile Inside Passage.  From Alaska to Seattle, it’s North America’s only rainforest.  Their brown bears own the shores. Rain falls for weeks without rest. What’s most unexpected are the surreal encounters with unexpected marine life.  The film presents these interactions, in addition to interviews from peoples of the region.  All threaded together by the adventurer’s friendship and unusual sense of humor.

16 to Life  (91 min.)
The one non-documentary film included in our festival… A small town teenager’s angst about sexual inexperience drives a comic quest for love and understanding on a birthday to end all birthdays.  This film was produced by Luther College alum Terry Trimpe, was shot entirely on-location in Iowa, and features several Iowa actors.

Gimme Green   (27 min)
Lawns are undeniably an American symbol.  But what do they really symbolize?  Pride and prosperity? Or waste and conformity?  Gimme Green is a humorous look at the American obsession with the residential lawn and the effects it has on our environment, our wallets and our outlook on life. From the limitless subdivisions of Florida to sod farms in the arid southwest, Gimme Green peers behind the curtain of the $40-billion industry that fuels our nation’s largest irrigated crop—the lawn.

American Outrage   (56 min)
Two grandmothers, Carrie Dann and Mary Dann, have been at the forefront of the Western Shoshone Nation’s struggle for land rights and sovereignty for nearly forty years. American Outrage documents their fight against the U.S. government’s unlawful attempts to take over traditional Shoshone land in Nevada, part of 60 million acres guaranteed to them in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. Over the years the Dann sisters have endured steady harassment from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and they have squared off against international gold mining corporations and the nuclear industry. Their courage and perseverance in asserting the rights of indigenous peoples have brought them numerous awards, including the 1993 Alternative Nobel Prize and the International Right Livelihood Award.

Asparagus: Stalking the American Life   (53 min)
Our friends in Michigan are having a tough time. Not only are thousands of union members out of work, the government is helping other countries grow asparagus as part of the war on drugs, creating unfair competition for farmers in Oceana County, once the Asparagus Capital of the World. But Michigan farmers are not giving up! Taking on fast food, free trade and the U.S. drug war, these indomitable Michiganders struggle to find creative ways to save their livelihood and their beloved roots. This fascinating, award-winning film, called ‘oddly brilliant’ by New York Magazine, unveils the complex connections between community identity, farming, politics and trade.

Light of the Himalaya   (70 min)
A moving story of giving back where it counts from award-winning filmmaker Michael Brown. At the heart the most formidable mountain range on earth lives a gracious people who suffer from the highest rates of cataract blindness on the planet. The North Face athlete team joins eye surgeons from Nepal and America in hopes of making a difference. This spectacular film follows the doctors’ work on the Himalayan Cataract Project all the way to the summit of a 21,000-foot Himalayan giant. The team visited the Tilganga Eye Center in Kathmandu as well as a remote Cataract Surgery Camp in a rural part of Nepal where Dr. Geoff Tabin and Dr. Sanduk Ruit provided high level eye care to locals including sight restoring cataract surgeries in many cases. After the eye camps the the team traveled to the Khumbu area of Nepal to climb 21,000-ft Cholatse. The North Face has joined together with GlobalGiving to sponsor the climb and proceeds raised from the ascents will go towards the Himalayan Cataract Project.

For the Price of a Cup of Coffee   (14 min)
What is the cost of convenience? For the Price of a Cup of Coffee is a short environmental documentary examining the life cycle of a paper cup and the repercussions of a society reliant on convenience. Why are less than 1% of coffee shop patrons bringing their own cup? Why do we have so much garbage, and where does it go? What is the true cost of a disposable culture? Shot throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including interviews with local activists, environmental experts and coffee shop owners. This film is full of information that all consumers should know about the products that we use every day, and the steps we need to make towards a more sustainable world.

Oil + Water  (55 min)
Oil + Water tells the story of two world-class kayakers and good friends who embark on the longest-ever petroleum-free road trip, traveling over 21,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina in a retro-fitted Japanese fire truck named Baby.  After converting the truck’s regular diesel engine to run on any kind of natural oil, Seth Warren and Tyler Bradt journeyed for over a year through 16 countries, an endless summer adventure of paddling, driving, exploring and promoting alternative fuel sources. By collaborating with schools, local governments, farmers, agricultural research centers and media, they held demonstrations, workshops and community gatherings to spread the word about sustainable energy, meeting many inspiring people and enjoying some of the best whitewater paddling in the Americas along the way.

American Eagle  (50 min)- Local submission (Bob Anderson)
Everything about them is big. They are one of nature’s largest raptors, with wings that can span eight feet, and nests that can weigh up to a ton. Unique to North America, the bald eagle is the continent’s most recognizable aerial predator, with a shocking white head, electric yellow beak and penetrating eyes. Yet most people know little about it beyond its striking appearance.  In the 1960s, the bald eagle was on the brink of extinction caused by the pesticide DDT and other human pressures. Following their protection as an endangered species, bald eagles have come roaring back. But even in the best of times, life in the wild for these birds is a surprisingly tough struggle.  From the pristine wilderness of Alaska to the Upper Mississippi River Valley, American Eagle goes behind the scenes and into the nest to provide the ultimate bird’s eye view into the private life of an American icon.

Tracking the Iowa Mural  (12 min)- Local submission (Kyrl Henderson)
Travel the roads of Iowa visiting the public art — murals — painted by noted Iowa Muralist Carl Homstad. Carl’s work is seen by more people every day than any other artist in Iowa because of his many murals all over Iowa. Hear Carl talk about the murals and hear the people who hired Carl and who live with his murals talk about working with Carl and his work. Funded in part with a grant from the Iowa Arts Council.

 Coming Home: E.F. Schumacher & the Reinvention of the Local Economy  
(27 min)- submission  (Chris Bedford of MI)
Coming Home tells the story of the Society’s remarkable work that includes founding of the nation’s first CSA, economic development based on Community Land Trusts, and the creation of the nation’s most successful local currency – BerkShares. “This film offers anyone thinking about relocalization of their community’s economy an inspirational model and a practical guide to that change,” said Denise O’Brien, candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. “Schumacher’s vision has never been more relevant.” 

Iowa Learning Farm DVD   (several 10-min shorts)
A new video series “A Culture of Conservation” from the Iowa Learning Farm. The series of six short videos explores the relationship humans have with soil and water and offers ways for everyone to have an active role in protecting and preserving the Earth’s natural resources.

Seed Savers Exchange DVD  (7 or 20 min. versions)
All about Seed Savers Exchange.