The Labia on Orange in Cape Town will host Earthnotes Environmental Film Festival from 27 July – 8 August. The festival will also travel up the West Coast to Namibia.
The festival will feature local and international documentaries focusing on the state of the environment. Many of the documentaries are award winners. There will be Q&A sessions after screenings with various environmental experts.
Earthnotes is organized by DLIST, an online information sharing community of individuals and organizations from coastal areas of South Africa, Namibia and Angola who are eager to discuss, educate and be part of solutions for common environmental problems.
Earthnotes pays special attention to oceans and water. Documentaries like A World Without Water shed light on the impending global scarcity of water, and Farming the Seas on over fishing of the world’s oceans. A Hell of Fishing is a trenchant documentary that shows the effects of over fishing in the African context.
The documentaries also cover controversial and timely global issues. Crude Impact and Source are two award-winning films that expose the collision of the insatiable appetite for oil with the rights of indigenous cultures and the environment. From Brazil comes an example of how cities can be planned in a more sustainable way in A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil.
Local productions range from images of the dry land and productive seas of the west coast featured in two episodes of A Last Glimpse series, to A Paradise under Pressure on the east coast, and the incredible interactions between species in the African savannah captured in Neil Curry’s award-winning film The Elephant, the Emperor and the Butterfly Tree.
“The common thread in all these films is a message of caution about the state of the earth, encouraging each of us to think and talk, but they also raise a note of hope for the earth, empowering us to act,’ says organiser Raquel Garcia from DLIST.
In addition to the Labia, the festival will be screened at the newly launched Environmental Resource Centre at the Bellville Campus of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) from 30 July to 8 August.
Garcia said the festival – planned to become an annual event. For further details, contact Raquel Garcia on 021 448 3778 or call the Labia on 021 424 5927 or the CPUT on 021 959 6926.
Tickets cost R20 per session and are available through the Labia on Orange.
