On March 3, Earthwatch staff were honored to be the guests of the Organization for the Assabet River (OAR) and their local event sponsors at their 2nd annual hosting of the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival’s national tour at the Maynard Fine Arts Theatre in Maynard, MA.

After taking in an amazing three hours of environmentally-themed short films that educated, provoked, entertained, and inspired, the Earthwatch Film Award committee was ultimately able to agree that two films best exemplified the spirit of citizen science at the heart of Earthwatch’s mission and also reflected the power of art to participate in environmental conservation efforts.

The first, “Missouri Stream Team” (28 minutes), was produced, directed, and written by Jim Karpowicz, and produced by the Documentary Group at Technisonic, St. Louis, MO. This engaging documentary, narrated by Cindy Woolf and featuring short interviews with local Stream Team activists, chronicles the twenty-year history of more than 80,000 volunteers organized into more than 4,000 official Missouri Department of Conservation Stream Teams. As viewers watch these everyday citizens become inspired to clean up, protect, and help scientists understand rivers and streams throughout Missouri, they’ll be moved to think about ways to take action in their own communities.  The film shows the growth of these efforts from a small group of fishermen to a statewide movement without losing sight of the deeply personal sense of connection to their local natural resources that motivates the Stream Team volunteers.

The achievements of that movement are impressive by any standard:  more than 5, 700 tons of litter collected at river and stream clean-ups, more than 117, 000 hours of educational programming conducted, 12, 115 storm drains stenciled to help prevent run-off pollution, and more than 19,155 water quality monitoring trips undertaken. It’s estimated that more than 382,170 people have participated in Stream Team events overall, and the film does a great job of showing the power of such citizen-driven environmental movements. Click here to view “Missouri Stream Team” on the program’s website and prepare to be inspired.

“A Year in the Desert: Anza Borrego” (15 minutes) draws its own inspirational power from the stunningly beautiful and surprisingly bio-diverse landscape of the 600,000 acre Anza Borrego Desert State Park in California. By Emmy-award winning filmmakers Chris Pyle (Wildland Films) and Nicholas Clapp, and narrated by actor Peter Coyote, this film shows the power of environmental art to effect change in a very specific way. When California seemed certain to close the state park due to budget constraints in 2009, the documentary was rushed to completion, and the Anza Borrego Foundation hand-delivered copies to every state legislator. When it came time for the vote in May of 2009, the Park survived.

Given the urgency of its production, the film explores the desert park in a surprisingly gentle and captivating fashion, following the rhythms of the seasons and impressing upon viewers the true nature of a region they might assume to be empty and unchanging. Whether capturing the sudden arrival of rains and flash floods, the blooming of wildflowers whose seeds may have waited for more than a decade, or the dynamic life cycles of the region’s birds, mountain lions, or namesake bighorn sheep (borrego), the film puts the lie to any idea that this desert is an empty wasteland. You can see some of the park’s beauty for yourself in the online trailer for “A Year in the Desert: Anza Borrego.”

The Wild and Scenic Film Festival was founded in 2003 by the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) in Nevada City, CA. SYRCL is a watershed advocacy group started in 1983 by a small group of concerned citizens opposed to several proposed dams. The festival’s name honors the 1999 inclusion of 39 miles of the South Yuba River in California’s Wild and Scenic River System, after a 16-year battle waged by SYCRL and other conservation partners.  The Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival is now the largest film festival of its kind in the United States.  Each January, a 3-day event in Nevada City, CA features more than 125 award-winning films, along with speakers, celebrities, and activists who bring a human face to the environmental movement.

In 2004, SYRCL launched the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival Tour, allowing environmental groups and community associations nationwide to participate in seeing and celebrating films that inspire activism. Starting with just two tour venues in 2004, the Wild and Scenic Tour now reaches hundreds. (Click to see if a Wild and Scenic Tour is coming to your area in 2010.) The Wild and Scenic Tour is a partnership between SYRCL, a network of national and local organizations like OAR, and the tour’s National Partners Patagonia, Cliff Bar, Tom’s of Maine, Osprey Packs, and Sierra Nevada Brewery.  The 9th Annual Wild and Scenic Film Festival will be launched in Nevada City on January 14, 2011, with 2011 tour dates to follow.

Earthwatch’s Film Award program has honored environmental filmmaking for more than two decades, recognizing the power and potential of visual media to reach mass audiences and inspire them to take action on behalf of our shared environment.  We’re grateful to the Wild and Scenic Tour and to our neighbors in the Organization for the Assabet River (which is itself part of an official wild and scenic river system) for the opportunity to join this year’s Award to their efforts. The full houses at this year’s and last year’s screenings in Maynard testify to the importance of bringing such films to audiences around the country. Congratulations to the makers of “Missouri Stream Team” and “A Year in the Desert: Anza Borrego.”