Professional Motion Picture Production and Distribution NEWS

Santa Cruz, CA - Run with the wolves, float through the oceans, and climb into trees, all in one evening.

Today is the opening night of the EarthVision Environmental Film and Video Festival in Santa Cruz, featuring some of the year�s best environmental films from around the world. Over three consecutive evenings, 18 films, including eight of the nine festival award winners, will be shown.

The films were selected from 68 entries, arriving from as far away as Belize, Australia, and England.

"They are all really powerful videos," said festival organizer Ed Schel.

"Most of them have been done by groups (of) concerned citizens," Schel said, but there were also submissions by students and professionals. "Think Twice," which did not win an award but is being shown tonight, was created in collaboration with a high school classroom. The students narrated the film, about teenage product consumption and its impact on the environment.

Festival winners were chosen by panels of volunteers from the community and local environmental groups. Because of the large number of entries, the judges watched only the first, middle, and last five minutes of each film. The beginning should grab people, the middle show continuity, and the end be uplifting and a call to action, said Schel.

"You can always tell the ones that are going to win because people moan when I go to turn them off after five minutes," he said.

Winners were selected based on their ability to affect audiences.

The festival has grown in size each year, with more submissions and larger audiences. Last year, one night of the festival was shown at the Del Mar Theatre for the first time and the show sold out. For this year�s festival, the first two nights will be held at the Del Mar Theatre, and the last night at the Louden Nelson Center auditorium, an even larger venue.

The EarthVision Film Festival was started by Schel and his business partner, Katherine Knight, seven years ago after they were unable to find any environmental film festivals in which to submit their work. In the six years of the festival�s existence, it has shown over 220 entries from 11 different countries. Last year�s festival was dedicated to Knight, who died of cancer in 2002.

Beyond giving out awards and putting on the festival, the EarthVision project also works to spread environmental awareness by airing all submitted videos on public access television. Santa Cruz Community Television airs the films in rotation on most Friday and Saturday nights, and this year the films will also be shown on the Gilroy, Monterey, and Palo Alto public access stations.

For details about the EarthVision Film Festival and a schedule of the films, visit www.earthvisionfest.org.

For the Community Television schedule, visit www.communitytv.org.

Contact Elise Kleeman at [email protected].