Let’s talk about climate change through the Environmental Film Festival

UD hosted its third annual Environmental Film Festival, “Lights, Camera, EARTH!” Over the course of three days from Friday to Sunday, six films were screened all of which shared the common theme of raising awareness for looming threat of climate change.

Organized by professor of History and English, Adam Rome, the festival had public screenings of various environmentally themed films. From well-known documentaries such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, to lesser-known films such as the recently released Divest.

Each screening was followed by an intellectual discussion mediated by a different professor or guest speaker, which prompted the audience—comprised of faculty, students, and local supporters of climate change activism—to discuss their feelings about each film and its significance. This year the annual guest speaker was Sven Huseby, star of the film A Sea Change which was screened Saturday night and followed by a Q&A.

I had a chance to speak with Rome himself after the first screening of the weekend, who shared with me his motivation in organizing this event: “I wanted to do something that would, first of all, just showcase how interesting, and varied, and imaginative environmental documentaries have become.

“They are a great way to bring together the community, students, faculty, and I was really excited about having discussions of the films.”

While the subject matter of the films screened each year has always been thematically grounded in environmental awareness, no year has had the same exact focus. This time around, Rome set his sights on the topic of climate change specifically, choosing films which depict the effects climate change has already had as well as the effects that it is projected to have. In my brief conversation with him, Rome explained that there are a great many types of environmental documentaries, ranging in format from basic exposes to autobiographical.

“I wanted people to see that, even though we just call (them) environmental documentaries, there are lots of little sub-genres. The first year I was a little more ambitious and I had each day have a theme.

“I’ve tried each year to come up with a different theme or set of themes. This years is probably the most coherent because they’re all on the same issue, but they’re all really different and I wanted people to think about that.”

Co-sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences Environmental Humanities Program and the Delaware Environmental Institute, and as a part of UD’s Earth Month initiative, “Lights, Camera, Earth!” is only one of the many environmentally themed events going on this month. Other events include a screening of Environmental documentary Battle for the Arctic on April 12th and the Green Expo on April 22nd.

The schedule of everything the University has planned for Earth Month can be found at www.UDel.edu/earthmonth.