Featuring the Eric Moe Award for Best Short on Sustainability winner Wings of Dust plus finalists: A Symphony of Tiny Lights and Broken Flight.
Featuring a post-screening conversation with Giorgio Ghiotto & Eliza Mitnick (Dir. Wings of Dust), Erika Valenciana & Mitchell Wenkus (Dir. Broken Flight), Nadia & Dominic Gill (Dir. A Symphony of Tiny Lights), and John Francis (Film Subject-A Symphony of Tiny Lights). Moderated by Gregory McGruder.
Award Winner: Eric Moe Award for Best Short on Sustainability
Vidal Merma, a Peruvian Indigenous journalist, risks his life daily to secure a future where his son, Erik, can savor the simple joy of drinking clean water. Wings of Dust illuminates a father's sacrifice, community resilience, and the unwavering human spirit in the face of environmental injustice.
Honorable Mention: Eric Moe Award for Best Short on Sustainability
A large contributor to the recent dramatic population loss of birds is window collisions. The people dedicated to saving injured birds provide us with hope for their future.
Migration season is when the Chicago Collision Bird Monitors are the busiest as mother nature literally slams into the indoors. The volunteers arrive downtown before sunrise to gather birds that have flown into skyscrapers in the hours before they head to work.The unfortunate salvages are brought to the historic Field Museum, which contains thousands of colorful taxidermied skins, cryogenically frozen muscle tissue samples, and meticulously labeled skeletal remains. The ornithologists sort and catalog specimens for vital and unprecedented research.
At the Willowbrook Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, the chirping, moving bags with their pecked holes all show signs of life. Veterinarians take us through tedious exams and capturing rogue birds. The final result of everyone’s hard work is a joyful send off.
Honorable Mention: Eric Moe Award for Best Short on Sustainability
In 1971 John Francis, known the world over as ‘Planetwalker,’ witnessed an oil tanker collision in the San Francisco Bay. The sight of oiled birds on the shoreline caused him to give up motorized transport and rely solely on his own two feet. Months after that he took a vow of silence convinced that listening rather than adding fuel to any fire was the way ahead.
He didn’t talk, but he kept on walking clear across the country and back again. During the next seventeen silent years, he listened and studied the world around him. Over many miles, his idea of environmentalism changed. At the core of his emerging belief were the people he met, talked to, and broke bread with.
Visit John's non-profit at https://planetwalk.org/
