DETAILS ABOUT THIS 2014 EDITION:

The movies:
11 movies, one per each major GFN event. Each film is chosen by each festival and is a “national production”.
The idea is to promote national documentary in the network (and to avoid the fact that a winner film can be the same in several countries and therefore been too supported in a way).
In this first edition were in competition:

1.
O Fisherman, My Oldman / Meu Pescador, Meu Velho
PORTUGAL – 2013, 58′
Director : Amaya Sumpsi
Proposed by Cine’Eco – Festival Internacional de Cinema Ambiental – PORTUGAL

Since 2005, the people of Porto Formoso, located in the Azores islands, are trying to decide between modernize the traditional fisheries, with the construction of new boats and a new concrete pier, or become a touristic destination whose attractions would be the old fishing boats and the natural and historical harbor. Over 7 years, this discussion among the inhabitants will be critical not only to this small community, but to understand how Portugal traces its path.

2.
Last Call / Ultima Chiamata
ITALY – 2012, 95′
Director : Enrico Cerasuolo
Website : http://www.lastcallthefilm.org/
Proposed by CinemAmbiente Environmental Film Festival – ITALY

Commissioned to MIT by the Club of Rome, founded by Aurelio Peccei, and published in 1972, Limits of Growth, the first of the Reports to the Club of Rome, was the first study to demonstrate that the consequences of human population growth (related rates of industrialization, pollution, food production, and exploitation of resources) could have devastating effects on the earth’s ecosystem and threaten human survival. Forty years later, a review of the biography of the study’s authors seeks to answer the question as to whether the limits have been exceeded or whether there is still time for a final call.

3.
Silvestre Pantaleón
MEXICO – 2011, 65′
Director : Roberto Olivares
Proposed by Cinema Planeta – Festival Internacional de Cine y Medio Ambiente de México – MEXICO

Silvestre Pantaleón lives in a Nahuatl speaking village in Guerrero, Mexico. He is one of the few who still has the traditional skills to make rope and lattice from plants. Looking for relief from pain and numbness, he visits a card reader and is told to make offerings to the dead, the hearth, the ants and the river in order to be cured. The film delicately follows Silvestre as he makes ropes to raise the money necessary for the ceremony “Levantamiento de sombra”, lifting the shadow. A study of a fading world and disappearing rituals.

4.
Segula, The Future of Ebro Land / Segula, El Futuro De Las Terres De L’Erbe
SPAIN – 2012, 69′
Director : Mario Pons
Website : http://www.segulafilms.com/
Proposed by Ecozine Film Festival – Festival Internacional de Cine y Medio Ambiente de Zaragoza – SPAIN

Segula, The future of the Ebro Land examines the socio-economic situation of “EbroLand”, south of Catalonia, in order to establish the principles of sustainability for integrated planning with the region. An example of local action, applicable globally.

5.
Amazon Gold
USA – 2012, 53’
Director : Reuben Aaronson
Website : http://amazonaid.org/, http://amazongoldfilm.com/
Proposed by Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital – USA

Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, Amazon Gold is the disturbing account of a clandestine journey into the Amazon rainforest. War journalists, Ron Haviv and Donovan Webster, led by a Peruvian biologist Enrique Ortiz, uncover the savage unraveling of pristine rainforest. They bear witness to the apocalyptic destruction in the pursuit of illegally mined gold with consequences on a global scale. Left in the wake of surreal images of once extraordinary beauty turned into hellish wasteland, Amazon Gold reaffirms the right of the rainforest to exist as a repository of priceless biodiversity.

You can download a PDF of the Amazon Gold Press kit by clicking the link below.

Amazon Gold Press Kit

6.
Serra Pelada – The Legend of the Golden Mountain / Serra Pelada – A Lenda Da Montanha De Ouro
BRAZIL- 2013, 100′
Director : Victor Lopes
Website : http://www.tvzero.com/projeto/serra-pelada
Proposed by FICA – Festival Internacional de Cinema e Video Ambiental – BRAZIL

Brazil, 1979. While swimming in a river near Serra Pelada, 430 km south of the mouth of the Amazon River, a boy finds a small gold nugget. Soon word of his discovery spreads; hundreds of prospectors arrive within a week, then 10,000 within a month, followed by 100,000 over the years. The mountain is transformed into an open pit mine, where thousands of miners shouldering sacks of minerals scramble up and down ladders. An emblematic place, immortalized by Sebastião Salgado in a famous account, but now a small lake contaminated by the accumulation of mercury used in gold mining.

7.
Un coin de paradis
FRANCE – 2012, 75′
Director : Nicolas Hans Martin
Proposed by FIFE – Festival International du Film d’Environnement – FRANCE

Gheorghe and Firica, an old Tzigane couple, are farmers living in a village in Eastern Romania. Over the seasons, their daily life is punctuated by their fights, their laughter, the work they have to do to survive and their endless wait for the return of their children who have gone abroad in search of a better life.

8.
Way Beyond Weight / Muito Além Do Peso
BRAZIL – 2012, 84′
Director : Estela Renner
Website : http://www.muitoalemdopeso.com.br/en
Proposed by Filmambiente – International Environmental Film Festival – BRAZIL

Way Beyond Weight is a documentary about obesity, the biggest epidemic in the history that affects children. For the first time children have the same disease symptoms as adults: heart and breathing problems, depression, and type 2 diabetes. All of them are based on obesity. Worldwide, kids are heavier than they should be. And unhealthy. From Brazil to Kuwait, childhood obesity is becoming very common. Why are kids carrying this extra weight? The industry, the marketers, the parents, the governments. Who is responsible for raising a healthy child? Way Beyond Weight is a movie that seeks to answer those questions in depth. It interviews families, kids and specialists from all over the world.

9.
Forest Dancing
KOREA – 2012, 95′
Director : Seok-Pil Kang
Proposed by GFFIS Green Film Festival in Seoul – KOREA

The densely wooded hill in the center of the Seoul district of Sungmisan is slated for development as the site of a private school. Here, since the 1990s, a communal neighborhood project has been experimenting with an ecological yet urban lifestyle. Kang Seokpil documents the Sungmisan community and its residents’ demonstrations for the preservation of their urban oasis and against the loss of values in a society driven by capitalism.

10.
The Ghosts in Our Machine
CANADA – 2013, 92′
Director : Liz Marshall
Website : http://www.theghostsinourmachine.com/
Proposed by Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival – CANADA

Beyond the domestic sort and the few examples we encounter in our daily urban lives, our experience with animals derives largely through the food we eat and the clothing we wear, the animal shows we watch or the clinically tested products we use. This without any empathy for nature, which modern humans have lost or forgotten. Not so for Jo-Anne McArthur, a photographer who traveled for a year across Canada, Europe, and the United States with the idea to tell and document the stories of how animals are exploited for commercial and industrial purposes.

11.
Trash Dance
USA – 2012, 68′
Director : Andrew Garrison
Website : http://trashdancemovie.com/
Proposed by San Francisco Green Film Festival San Francisco Green Film Festival – USA