See an environmental superhero fly through the sky, a time-traveling climate change reporter, and animals saved from Western wildfires.
As part of the Earth Day Mini Film Fest 2021, the One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest will feature 14 Honorable Mention short films in two one-hour events on Saturday, April 24, at 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Online discussion with young filmmakers from California to Texas to New York will be facilitated by Young Filmmakers Contest Founding Director Sue Crothers.
A global sustainability expert, Wayne Visser, Ph.D., is a fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership and holds the chair in Sustainable Transformation Antwerp Management School in Belgium. He is the co-presenter of the documentary, “Closing the Loop,” which explores five key strategies for achieving circularity—reduce, reuse, recycle, renew and reinvent—by showcasing examples from Europe, Latin America and Africa. The documentary features insights from experts from the World Economic Forum and the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. One Earth Film Festival publicist Cassandra West interviewed Visser via a Zoom chat recently.
What was your motivation for making “Mermaids Against Plastic?”
I went on vacation to the Quintana Roo region of Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula. We were walking on a beach in a spectacular, remote area and I was horrified by the amount of plastic covering the beach. It was coming from all over the world—the U.S., Russia, China, South America. It made me realize that the responsibility for this is on all of us. People need to understand that this is where their plastic is going.
Despite the confinement and anxieties surrounding this past year, 149 students age 8 to 25 managed to make and submit films to the One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest. Of those, 10 will receive top prizes at 3 p.m. Saturday, March 13, in the Awards Celebration, while 15 Honorable Mention films will be screened during the Earth Day Festival in April.
A trip to Chicago to accept his first-place award in the One Earth Film Festival’s Young Filmmakers Contest brought Nathan Goswick more than he expected. The 17-year old’s winning entry, “Plastic Bags,” captured the attention of Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, a nonprofit that presses corporations on sustainability.
