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RegenTO is happy to collaborate with Water Docs Film Festival to showcase the newest and best environmental documentaries from around the world. We helped organize film showings with significant panel discussions and audience involvement.
Best known for the Water Docs Film Festival for over a decade, Ecologos uses storytelling through documentary cinema and encounters with the arts for environmental education to build pathways for meaningful change. Since 1998, other programs such as community town hall meetings have provided experiential learning to reconnect people with their most powerful experiences of water and climate as a foundation for action. The Water Docs @ School program offers an exciting in-depth curriculum for grades 7 and 8, where students learn about water, create a water protection project in the community, and film the process. WATCH the winning films and projects.
As the closing event of the 2023 Water Docs Film Festival, we showed two important films, followed by an amazing panel of local water champions relating their work to the films. See below for how to watch them.
Lake Erie is a global treasure. It provides drinking water and hydro power for millions and supports both a multi-million dollar economy and a truly remarkable ecosystem, including one of the largest freshwater fisheries in the world.
However, harmful algae blooms are a widespread issue, contaminating drinking water, and changing the ecosystems in lakes. In 2014 the citizens of Toledo, Ohio lost running water for three days when a bloom of highly toxic algae entered the drinking water plant from Lake Erie. The film explores the confluence of science, public sentiment, politics, and the powerful farming lobby as Ohio wrestles with how to confront the drivers of toxic algae in one of the Great Lakes.
WATCH The Erie Situation (51 min) directed by David J. Ruck; you can rent it for $2.99. Great Lakes Commons and Plastic Ocean. There’s a wonderful discussion guide for the film.
READ this update on the situation as of July 2024, see Environmental Defence.
The panellists in the conversation:
Gregory Ford — Director of Water Programs, Swim Drink Fish
Owen Goltz — Owner, Riverdale Farm & Forest Inc.
Rachel Parent — Healthy Food and Environment Advocate
Michelle Woodhouse — Program Manager, Freshwater Protection, Environmental Defence
Raiden Lavesque — Fire Keeper, The Thunderbird Clan
WATCH the Town Hall Conversation.
READ North of Long Tail: A documentary photo series celebrating Lake Erie by Colin Boyd Shafer.
We also showed Whale Guitar: Instrument of Change
(12 min) by Shawn Tetrault. Inspired by Herman Melville’s epic tale, Moby-Dick or The Whale, musician and toy designer Jen Long created a remarkable custom electric guitar. The whale and the storms of climate change are an Anthropocene warning, and hundreds of guitarists have been invited to play.
We hosted an engaging discussion with noted environmentalist, entrepreneur and author Paul Hawken, creator of Project Drawdown and founder of the important Regeneration initiative, with three exciting conversation partners: Bryanna R. Brown, Allie Rougeot, and Melanie Hoffman.
Inuk Community Support Worker and Indigenous rights and climate justice activist at Indigenous Climate Action
Co-founder of Fridays For Future Toronto and a program manager at Environmental Defence
Program Manager at the Alberta Council for Environmental Education, Co-founder of Drawdown Alberta
This event showcased Paul’s new book Regeneration: Ending The Climate Crisis in One Generation, a compelling and practical response to the urgency of the climate crisis. We invite you to visit the new website Regeneration.org to learn more. It builds on his 2017 book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, a rigorous scientific research project to map, model and measure existing solutions with the potential to help humanity reach ‘drawdown’ by 2050 - the point when the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere begins to decline year after year.
As Paul says, ”Regeneration has two meanings. It refers to regenerating life on earth. And it refers to a new generation of humanity coming together to reverse global warming.”
WATCH the 90-minute conversation between Paul Hawken and three important and exciting Canadian environmental voices. We are inspired by the unique experiences and perspectives each of them brings to
the discussion.
