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Central Coast Bioneers, in cooperation with our Strategic Partner, the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, will be screening selected films on Saturday, October 16. Some films are full-length documentaries, others are shorts. All screenings will be open and free to all conference registrants with either an All Conference Pass or a Saturday Conference Pass. Check back on this website for more detailed information on screening times and locations.

Full Length Documentaries

Carbon Nation
A film by Peter Byck

Carbon Nation is a documentary film about climate change SOLUTIONS. Even if you doubt the severity of the impact of climate change or just don't buy it at all, this is still a compelling and relevant film that illustrates how  SOLUTIONS to climate change also address other social, economic and national security issues. The film introduces us to a host of entertaining and endearing characters along the way. 

• Carbon Nation is an optimistic (and witty) discovery of what people are already doing, what we as a nation could be doing and what the world needs to do to stave off climate change by moving to a low carbon economy.
• Public opinion is sliding the wrong way - far fewer people are concerned about climate change than even a year ago. Carbon Nation will give a majority of people an entertaining, informed and pragmatic primer about why it’s incredibly smart to be a part of the new, low-carbon economy: it’s good business, it emboldens national & energy security and it improves health & the environment.
• Carbon Nation’s optimism and pragmatism is appealing across the political spectrum. While other good films have been about problems, blame and guilt, Carbon Nation is a film that celebrates solutions, inspiration and action.

Watch the Carbon Nation trailer

The Fire Next Time
A Film By Patrice O’Neill

The people of the Flathead Valley in Montana were stunned when a domestic terror cell's plot to kill local leaders was uncovered. Ex-cop Brenda Kitterman and environmentalist Mike Raiman wanted to do something to address the local tensions, but the community was torn. Many residents were losing their jobs in timber and mining, and blamed environmentalists. Adding fuel to the fire was a radio talk show host who declared environmentalists "an enemy... to be annihilated." Over a stormy two-year period, The Fire Next Time follows a deeply divided group of Montana citizens caught in a web of conflicts intensified by rapid growth and the power of talk radio.

With the premise that ordinary people can sometimes, through inaction, allow extremist violence to grow against friends and neighbors, The Fire Next Time seeks to find out how the contentiousness in the Flathead Valley could take such a bitter and destructive turn — and once taken, how a community can marshal the will to pull itself back.

“I made this film for the people on the sidelines who may know their town is in trouble but don’t know what to do about it….”   Patrice O’Neill, Filmmaker

Followed by a discussion facilitated by Doreen Liberto-Blanck, AICP, MDR

Watch The Fire Next Time trailer

The Great Dance: A Hunter’s Story
A film by Craig Foster and Damon Foster

The Great Dance is a film about three San (Bushman) hunters and their extraordinary relationship with the land and the animals.  This film shows Africa in a new light, an ancient light not seen before.  It shows man and animal at their most extreme limits of endurance through the ‘chasing hunt,’ a ritual never before revealed to the world outside the Kalahari.  The Great Dance as a film has received over 30 major international awards, including Best Film at the Encounters South Africa International Documentary Festival. 

Note:  This film contains true-to-life depictions of hunters dressing and eating a kill.  Not for the squeamish.

Followed by a discussion facilitated by:
Brian Engleton - Instructor, Outside Now Nature Academy

Watch The Great Dance Trailer

A Sea Change
A film by Barbara Ettinger

Screening Sponsor: Infinite Functions

Imagine a world without fish. It’s a frightening premise, and it’s happening right now. A Sea Change follows the journey of retired history teacher Sven Huseby on his quest to discover what is happening to the world’s oceans. After reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Darkening Sea,” Sven becomes obsessed with the rising acidity of the oceans and what this “sea change” bodes for mankind. His quest takes him to Alaska, California, Washington, and Norway as he uncovers a worldwide crisis that most people are unaware of. Speaking with oceanographers, marine biologists, climatologists, and artists, Sven discovers that global warming is only half the story of the environmental catastrophe that awaits us. Excess carbon dioxide is dissolving in our oceans, changing sea water chemistry. The more acidic water makes it difficult for tiny creatures at the bottom of the food web to form their shells. The effects could work their way up to the fish 1 billion people depend upon for their source of protein.

A Sea Change is also a touching portrait of Sven’s relationship with his grandchild Elias. As Sven keeps a correspondence with the little boy, he mulls over the world that he is leaving for future generations. A disturbing and essential companion piece to An Inconvenient Truth, A Sea Change brings home the indisputable fact that our lifestyle is changing the earth, despite our rhetoric or wishful thinking.

Barbara Ettinger, the director and Sven Huseby, the star, will be coming to speak at the screening.

Watch the Sea Change Trailer

Fresh
A Film by Ana Sofia Joanes

Fresh profiles the farmers, thinkers, and business people across the nation who are at the forefront of re-inventing food production in America. With a strong commitment to sustainability, they are changing how farms are run, how the land is cared for, and how food is distributed. Their success demonstrates that a new paradigm based on sustainable practices can be profitable and a model for our food system, if people choose to support it.  Fresh opens with a short summary of the problems and consequences of industrialized food production, then focuses primarily on the individuals who are creating new approaches to address environmental, health, and economic challenges throughout the food chain.  Innovators profiled include:

• Joel Salatin, a world-famous sustainable farmer and entrepreneur who, by observing nature, devised a rotational grazing system for his animals that heals the land while making his operations many times more profitable than his conventional farming neighbors.
• Will Allen, a former pro basketball player and recipient of a Macarthur “Genius Award”, who is now one of the most influential leaders of the urban farming movement. He teaches people in the inner city the value of healthy food and how to grow their own.

“We all know about the problems with the American food system, but what about the solutions? FRESH is a bracing, even exhilarating look at the whole range of efforts underway to renovate the way we grow food and feed ourselves.”
-Michael Pollan, Author, In Defense of Food

Robin Burnside, long-time Big Sur resident, chef, and author, will introduce and facilitate audience discussion of the feature documentary film “FRESH.”

Watch the Fresh trailer

Flow
A film by Irena Salina

Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis.

Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.

Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question 'CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?'

Beyond identifying the problem, Flow also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround.

Watch the Flow Trailer

Short Films

The Bike Happening
A film by Todd Peterson & Simon Jones

One night a month in San Luis Obispo, CA, hundreds of people gather in a carnival atmosphere to ride their home-made bike creations dressed in hilarious costumes. The Bike Happening documents the unfolding events of the 'organized coincidence' known by the same name. The story begins with the gathering of the riders and a sense of anticipation for the coming night. When the ride commences, interviews with participants are inter-cut with first-person footage, showing the freedom of the rider's experience. As the ride progresses, the viewer's perspective becomes the same as one of the hundreds of riders that make up the moving mass of bikes. From this point of view they experience how the feeling of freedom can quickly turn to one of chaos.

Interviews with the police and founding members of the ride reveal a struggle to combat the mob mentality and keep the ride positive for the community. We learn how the Bike Happening originated in response to Critical Mass, a pro-bike protest ride that takes place in many major cities. The Bike Happening's enigmatic founder soon commands the viewer's attention as he explains the ride's inner workings, benefits, and meaning with his quirky eloquence. As we learn his three rules for life we see how the Bike Happening is the physical manifestation of his philosophy. What first seems like a whimsical event is shown to have profound meaning. We see how one man has been able to meet his destiny, by "fertilizing the good in his community."

Movie Length: 27 minutes
Followed by a question and answer session with co-director Todd Peterson.

Watch The Bike Happening trailer

Claim Your Change
A film by Kyle Thiermann

A 20-year old Santa Cruz surfer works with local fishermen in Chile to oppose a new coal-fired power plant. One result is this acclaimed short film which focuses on the multi-national funding of environment-threatening projects and advocates a simple but powerful solution; a second result is that the surfer is credited with convincing depositors to transfer $100 Million from large banks to community-based banks. The surfer/filmmaker was awarded the Blue Frontier Campaign/Peter Benchley Award for Ocean Protection in June, 2010.

Filmmaker Kyle Thiermann will attend the screening for a Q&A session.

California Central Coast Kelp Forest - The First "Green-Dive Movie" Shot Entirely From Kayaks
Filmmakers Terry Lilley and Sue Sloan

Filmmakers Terry Lilly (http://terrylilley.wordpress.com) and Sue Sloan explore the undersea world beneath the Kelp "islands" common off California's central coast, revealing a world of surprising beauty, color, and diversity. Using beach-launched kayaks to paddle out to the kelp beds and dive from, Lilly, a marine biologist and former pro surfer, now a staff biologist with the Save Our Seas organization, and Sloan introduce us to the richness of the kelp ecosystem off the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties' coast, from "goofy" seals to a stunning variety of colorful creatures from fish, to sponges, starfish, anemones, sea slugs and nudibranches. The film illustrates the complex interrelations of creatures under the kelp canopy, punctuated and territorially defined by the long vertical kelp trunks, called stipes, and their hold-fasts that anchor the giant and bull kelp to the ocean floor. The filmmakers don't lobby but it's hard to see the pictures of the thriving kelp ecosystem and not worry about how vulnerable it would be to a Gulf-like drilling accident.

Filmmaker Sue Sloan will be available at the screening for Q&A.

The Story of Bottled Water
Filmmaker Annie Leonard

The Story of Bottled Water employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over seven minutes, the film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to ‘take back the tap,’ not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.

The Story of Cap & Trade
Filmmaker Annie Leonard

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis. If you’ve heard about cap and trade, but aren’t sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.

About Annie Leonard and the Story of Stuff Project
The Story of Stuff Project’s mission is to build a strong, diverse, decentralized, cross-sector movement to transform systems of production and consumption to serve ecological sustainability and social wellbeing. Our goals are to amplify public discourse on a diverse set of sustainability issues and to facilitate the growing Story of Stuff community’s involvement in strategic efforts to build a more sustainable and just world.

The Story of Stuff Project was founded in June 2008 by Annie Leonard to leverage the remarkable success of The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute web-film that explores the often hidden environmental and social consequences of America’s love affair with its stuff. Currently, the film has been viewed over 10 million times on-line and in thousands of schools, houses of worship, community centers and businesses around the world. Our Project’s focus is on systems of production and consumption—in particular the harmful environmental and social impacts of current modes of producing, consuming and disposing of material goods. Our Project is systems-focused, solutions-oriented and change-driven.