We had to leave town for this one!  Here’s what went down: Friday night’s program featured experimental & documentary works that bring light to the vulnerability of nature at the hands of human impact. A two-channel short by Laura Parnes brings about the idea of the human relationship with climate change. In an immersive four-channel piece, Carla Maldonado brings us a portrait from her time spent in an Indigenous community in the Amazon. An experimental journey into images of nature by Jonathan Ellis conjured ideas of gender fluidity against the backdrop of nature. We feel the captivity of a boxed snake with a short film by Liselot van der Heijden. In a longer form work, Daniel de la Calle shows a day in the life in a fishing village on a Brazilian island threatened by the dramatic change of development.

On Saturday, the festival presented a film by Sara Arno, Sara’s Galapagos, an intimate portrayal of a cycle of a year on this farm, combining elements of performance art, time lapse, & vérité observation of her mother, heirloom expert, Amy Goldman Fowler. Daniel Sherer portrays Cary Fowler & the safe haven for the world’s agricultural genetic diversity in The Seed Vault. Grahame Weinbren brings us vignettes as time lapse portraits with themes of environment & nature. Shelly Silver observes the super-focused effort of all creatures toward the expression of vitality in her film. Isabella Rosselini brings us quips from her award-winning series of shorts, Green Porno & Mammas that offer comical & scientifically insightful studies of animal behavior.