2005 FESTIVAL 59 min. A Life Among Whales describes the unique relationship between people and whales, as told by renowned whales biologist and pioneer Dr. Roger Payne who, since the early 1970s, has consistently advanced the boundaries of science and activism. The film blends Payne’s biography with natural history, including brutal images of whale slaughter from […]
2005 FESTIVAL 60 min. America’s Lost Landscapedepicts the changes to Midwestern landscape during the past 150 years. Once covering 28 million acres of North America, and 80 percent of Iowa alone, today’s tallgrass prairie is largely converted to farmland. Narrated by actress Annabeth Gish (West Wing), America’s Lost Landscape seeks to enlighten audiences of the importance […]
2005 FESTIVAL 53 min. This film provides a compelling glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th-century American labor history in the mineral mining industry: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana. The pace is ponderous, the tone artistically “edgy,” as An Injury to One chronicles the mysterious death of union organizer Frank Little, an unsolved […]
2005 FESTIVAL 92 min. An unusual and engaging peek behind the scenes of Winged Migration, the successful 2001 film by Jacques Perrin. Filmmaker Eduard Erne gives us a look at twenty “bird people”;—biologists, dropouts and adventurers—who devoted four years of their lives to raising the migratory birds that are followed during migration in Winged Migration. The group […]
2005 FESTIVAL 98 min. When Judith Helfand’s parents clad their home in blue vinyl, she became suspicious. Helfand sets off to explore the life cycle of vinyl–and a subsequent search for sustainable, healthier, low- risk alternative. (IF she can convince her reluctant parents to replace it!) Helfand is an engaging and humorous guide to a […]
2005 FESTIVAL 83 min. Deep Blue is an innovative documentary that takes its audience on an exciting voyage through the last great frontier on Earth: the Ocean. The filmmakers have captured a world below the waves in a way that no other has, using technology that takes us where few humans have ever explored before: into […]
2005 FESTIVAL. [Short Films] More animated environmental wit from Nick Hilligoss, the brilliant clay animator of Turtle World, Good Riddancefollows the exploits of Eco, the clean, green pest controller with a clever biological solution for every pest problem. (When looking for an ecological solution, it’s good to remember that everything is related.
2005 FESTIVAL 103 min. German director Werner Herzog accepted the unusual task of editing 100 hours of astonishing footage and interviews made by a man who had since died of a grizzly attack. Herzog emerged with this fascinating one-of-a-kind film. Grizzly Manis the haunting story of Timothy Treadwell, a desperate believer in the romantic ideal of […]
2005 FESTIVAL 26 min. This is a fun film that teaches kids (K-5), as well as their parents, about waste and recycling. Directed by Ellen Hovde & Muffie Meyer with drawings by New Yorker cartoonist Ed Koren, Where Does My Garbage Go? is a great adventure about the process of collecting and dealing with trash. Songs are […]
2005 FESTIVAL 90 min. The ACFF selection committee selected In the Blood as an interesting counterpoint to Kalahari Family. This controversial film follows the hunting education, in Africa, of a young American boy. The film raises hunting to the level of a religion—a rite of passage. Filmmaker George Butler documents an African expedition that retraces the 1908 safari of […]
