Come for the films, Stay for the Debate: Festival Forum Day

Festival Forum Day is where things really heat up at the 16th annual Planet In Focus Environmental Film Festival.

Join us on Saturday, October 24th at Innis College (St. George U of T Campus) for a full-day line-up of films each accompanied by panel discussions designed to get audiences engaged with the issues presented on screen. Highlights include moderated panels with guest experts in the field of food/GMOs, mining, seed security, economics, ethics and e-waste.

Come out to watch great films and stay to learn more and join the debate! Click on each film below to find out more details!

Camp Home Project (2015) and Farming Without Water (2014)

co-presented by EarthDay Canada. Camp Home Project takes us up close and personal in classic cinema verité style with celebrity Chef Michael Stadtlander – famous for his family farm where they raise their own vegetables and livestock and cook multi-course dinners served in their farm house. What the Stadtlanders offer to the guests who come to eat their meals is more than food: it’s a philosophy of elegant sustainability mixed with joy and passion. Farming Without Water explores Palestinian agriculture in the Jordan Valley where access to water is limited. Because of Israeli settlement, Palestinian farmers are forced to alter or abandon their traditional agricultural practices.

Chef Michael Stadtlander will be in attendance and taking part in a Q&A following the film.

We Call Them Intruders: Financing Canadian Mining in Africa (2015) and Shadow of a Giant (2015)

co-presented by Amnesty International and Mining Watch. We Call Them Intruders exposes the fact that if you live and work in Canada, chances are you’re connected to Canadian mining companies – whether you know it or not – through your savings, taxes, Canada Pension Plan contributions, RRSPs and other investments. Shadow of a Giant is an appropriate screening partner, a powerful reminder of one Canada’s largest environmental disasters: Yellowknife’s Giant Mine, situated within Yellowknife’s Dene First Nation’s territory (Akaitcho Territory), has 237,000 tons of highly toxic arsenic trioxide, a byproduct of the defunct gold mine, buried in its collapsing chambers.

Panelists include producer/editor Geneva Guerin of We Call Them Intruders, Filmmaker of Shadow of a Giant Clark Ferguson and Communication/Outreach Coordinator of Mining Watch Jamie Kneen. Join us as we take a hard look at why communities, governments and corporations are so often pitted against each other in an explosive battle over extracting the earth’s riches.

Seeds of Time (2014) and Chicken Cube (2014)

co-presented by USC Canada. In light of the recent events surrounding the ‘doomsday’ Svalbard seed bank, which contains the world’s most prized crops, the panel discussion with filmmaker of Seeds of Time Sandy McLeod and Jane Rabinowicz, director of Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security, will be particularly timely!

The screening of Chicken Cube, an animated short created as a satirical comment on the increasing mechanization of livestock farming, will add depth to the discussion.

Banking Nature (2014) and The Oldest Stone (2014)

co-presented by the Institute for a Resource-Based Economy. A film about putting a price tag on nature as a strategy to save it from environmental destruction (sound a little crazy?) followed by a panel discussion led by Ryan Dyment, one of Toronto’s leading sharing economy advocates, economist Ellie Perkins, filmmaker Denis Delestrac and CEO/Co-founder of Corporate Knights Inc. Toby Heaps  – YES PLEASE! This is going to be one interesting conversation.

The E-Waste Tragedy (2014) and All Is Found (2014)

co-presented by The Recycling Council of Ontario (RCO) and the Goethe-Institut Toronto. Illegal recycling – a toxic business on a global scale. Join Filmmaker Cosima Dannoritzer and Christine Furedy, Researcher & Professor of Urban Studies & Faculty of Arts at York University, to talk real talk about where all our electronic gadgets end up when we’re done with them and what we can do about it.

The E-Waste Tragedy will be screened with the short All Is Found, which follows Mickey, a circuit-bending musician, dumpster diver and self-described hoarder who explores an abandoned school in search of objects he can incorporate into musical experiments as part of his sonic and electronica practice.