The effy 2021 lineup

 

Thank you to our filmmakers, audience, panelists, moderators, and Sponsors for joining us for EFFY 2021!

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WINNING FILMS OF EFFY 2021:

  • Audience Choice - Best Feature: Gather

  • Audience Choice - Best Short: Tabira


Wednesday: 3/24


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Gather

Gather is an intimate portrait of a growing movement amongst Indigenous Americans to reclaim their spiritual and cultural identities through obtaining sovereignty over their ancestral food systems, while battling against the historical trauma brought on by centuries of genocide.

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Melita

Only in fairytales do we hear about lands of honey, bees losing their memory and masked heroes. But will we only read about the Maltese honey bee species, once the last one leaves the hive and is faced with the selfishness of people. 

Melita documents the fading craft and ancient tradition in a country that has forgotten its roots. Few beekeepers in Malta act as preservers of history and silenced advocates for change, but still their native honeybee is starved by invasive species and a modernised society. We are the authors of fairy tales, and this one is being written for generations to come. 

We only read about some of the inhabitants of our planet in books; we see them only in coloured pictures on paper. Malta has more than 157 tower cranes, but only 1 honeybee species. Why is it important and how should we care?  



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The Humongous Fungus Among Us

A quiet Upper Michigan town becomes the center of an international media frenzy after three scientists discover a record-breaking "Humongous Fungus" living next door. Decades later, the town and the scientists continue to embrace the fungus as a growing symbol of community and wonder. Who will be crowned Mr. Fungi? Will there be a giant mushroom pizza? Will the "Humongous Fungus" outlive us all?

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Pushed Up The Mountain

Pushed Up The Mountain is a poetic and emotionally intimate film about plants and the people who care for them. Through the tale of the migrating rhododendron, now endangered in its native China, the film reveals how high the stakes are for all living organisms in this time of unprecedented destruction of the natural world.

Beginning in my godfather's garden in the Scottish Highlands, the film travels between conservationists in Scotland and China who devote their lives to the rhododendron’s survival. Patiently observed footage of conservationists at work combines with centuries-old landscape paintings and my speculative voice to create a thought-provoking film about human efforts to protect nature for and from ourselves.

 

Thursday: 3/25

 
 
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Ophir

Ophir tells the story of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea and its people who are hoping for peace, working for freedom, and protecting their Indigenous culture. The story of an unknown indigenous revolution for humanity, land, and culture and a decade-long war. The film documents its origin and aftermath, where antagonistic visions of the world collude and collide. A poetic yet dramatic ode to the indelible thirst of a peoples for freedom, culture, and sovereignty; it offers a gripping exposition of the visible and invisible chains of colonization and its enduring cycles of physical and psychological warfare.

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Injection and Outrage

Injection and Outrage is a 15-minute look inside one woman’s fight against injection wells in her community as she strives to protect her own land and that of her mother’s.

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Understory

Elsa Sebastian is a young fisherman who grew up in a salty fishing village in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. When Elsa learns that millions of acres of her rainforest home will be stripped of protections and opened to clearcut logging, she’s driven to action; first fixing up an old sailboat, and then setting sail on a 350-mile voyage to explore the last stands of ancient forest in the Tongass. Elsa’s joined on this expedition by two friends: a biologist, Dr. Natalie Dawson, and a botanical illustrator, Mara Menahan. Together, the three women document the wild beauty of the coastal temperate rainforest and bear witness to the destructive impacts of clearcut logging



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Taming the Garden

A powerful man, who is also the former prime minister of Georgia, has developed an exquisite hobby. He collects century-old trees along Georgia’s coastline. He commissions his men to uproot them and bring them to his private garden. Some of these trees are as tall as 15-floor-buildings. And in order to transplant a tree of such dimensions some other trees are chopped down, electric cables are shifted and new roads are paved through mandarin plantations.

 

Friday: 3/26

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Tabira

Tabira tells the story of a family of veterinarians who adopted a chick that nobody wanted. The unexpected arrival of a raptor that ended up becoming a daughter and a high-flying sister, changing their lives forever. A bird that, with its beating wings and hawkish look, made them dream of flying through the skies. A year later, the winds carries Irati's and Alfonso's words, reminding them of the love they feel for the one that will always be their best friend: a Harris’s Hawk called Tabira.

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From the Mountains to the Ocean: Turtles of Alabama

Alabama is a global hotspot for turtle diversity and the perfect playground for turtle scientists. The variety of microhabitats traversing the state create conditions for turtle diversity unmatched anywhere else on the planet. This film explores the “glamorous life of turtles” in Alabama -- from the dramatic alligator snapping turtle to the elusive and almost extinct flattened musk turtle -- and the special people who spend their time protecting this critical species.

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The Church Forests of Ethiopia

In Amharic the word for forest means “mystery.” In northern Ethiopia that mystery is under threat. What few intact tropical forests remain are those surrounding Orthodox churches. These so called church forests are so critical for biodiversity that biologist E.O. Wilson declared them one of 15 global “hot spots” in dire need of conservation. These montane forests are facing threats from deforestation, agriculture, and climate change. The question, however, is not only why they are threatened, but why they persist. Amidst depressing news of stalled climate negotiations and widespread deforestation, this story shows a symbiotic relationship between religion and science that has been sorely neglected.

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The Guest

The story about the meeting of a forester and a she-bear.

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American Ocelot

American Ocelot tells the story of one of the most endangered and beautiful wild cats in the United States — a species so elusive that high quality images and video have never been captured until now. With fewer than 100 individuals remaining in the US, the ocelot is critically endangered, genetically isolated, and only exists in Texas. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on land acquisition, research, and conservation, ocelot numbers and habitat have steadily decreased since it was listed as an endangered species. But there is hope. Their genetics can be rescued by translocations from Mexico and suitable habitat exists on private lands.... if opposing parties can come to an agreement on their management methods. American Ocelot provides a glimpse into the lives of this mysterious species, explores the nuances of the Endangered Species Act, and aims to invigorate ocelot recovery to ensure the long-term survival of the species.

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The Linesman


The Linesman is a 30-minute documentary about one man’s mission to end human-elephant conflict in his homeland. With an unprecedented view of the plight of threatened villagers and their massive, majestic foes -- the Asian Elephant -- we come to truly understand both sides of this deadly struggle. Set in the rural landscape of Myanmar, The Linesman illustrates how decades of massive deforestation, the loss of critical habitat, and the increase in elephant poaching for ivory and skin, have driven elephants to desperate measures to survive. In the search for food and safety, they invade nearby villages destroying essential crops and posing a lethal risk to villagers. To protect their livelihoods and their loved ones, some villages have resorted to calling in brutal poachers to stop the elephants. The destruction on both sides has created devastating results that demand a search for solutions.

 

Saturday: 3/27

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From North to South

From North to South tells the stories of small island states from the North Sea to the South Pacific that are among the lowest producers of CO2, yet are the ones most affected by climate change and rising sea levels. Three destinations that share the same longitude, the same threat and the same will to exist.

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Cry of the Forests

Western Australia’s southwest forests are part of one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet and are recognised for their ability to capture and store carbon. They are vital to slowing run-away climate change yet instead of preserving them they are being cut down at an alarming rate for charcoal, firewood and woodchips. Cry of the Forests takes viewers to the heart of the forests to see first-hand the beauty of these towering ecosystems and to witness the community battle to save them.

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Aguilucho: Dance of the Harpy Eagle

In the remote Darién Gap rainforest, indigenous communities face the advance of loggers and cattle ranchers, an existential threat to their way of life and the ecosystem upon which they rely. When a rare Harpy Eagle nest is discovered near their community, the Emberá tribe of Playa Muerto find an unlikely ally. By protecting their lands and the Eagle's habitat, they can benefit from the ecotourism she attracts, and reconnect with their own traditional heritage. Aguilucho: Dance of the Harpy Eagle is an exploration of a renewed relationship between the tribe and the great raptor. From the development of collaborative science and monitoring practices to the revival of an ancient Eagle Dance, it shows an inspiring model for conserving both a culture and a rainforest.

 

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

DAY 1

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2021 (7 PM - 8 PM EST)

Indigenous Food Systems In The Eastern United States

The Indigenous Food Systems in the Eastern U.S. panel focused on the experiences of Indigenous peoples in the eastern United States with particular attention to historical and contemporary relationships to food and will highlight key themes discussed in Gather


Panelists

Danielle Hill

Danielle Hill, founder of Heron-Hill LLC holds an MPA in Sustainable Development from the World Learning Graduate Institute and in 2018 established her consulting business Heron-Hill LLC. She works in various capacities for Tribal governments, Tribal Organizations and Native American non-profits consulting on a variety of Indigenous issues. Danielle is also a student midwife and Doula and is passionate about reviving indigenous birthing practices, promoting food sovereignty, indigenous farming and maintaining Eastern Woodland traditions. As a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and raised in Mashpee all her life, she has witnessed many sightings of Blue Herons on Cape Cod, especially over the past few years. However, more recently almost a dozen have been found mysteriously dead on Tribal lands in Mashpee. In many cultural mythologies, the Heron symbolizes balance, self-reliance and an ability to progress and evolve. Heron-Hill LLC was formed to continue to raise awareness and appreciation of this great bird.

 

Rachel Beth Sayet

Rachel Beth Sayet or Akitusut (She Who Reads) is a member of the Mohegan nation. Raised with the spirits of her ancestors, she grew up learning traditional stories and teachings and participating in tribal events.

Rachel has always been passionate about and proud of her Mohegan heritage and identity as well as an avid studier and learner about other cultures, indigenous and beyond. History has always been her favorite subject.

Rachel’s other main passion throughout her life has been food. As a child, she grew up cooking with her grandmother and mother. Rachel’s grandmother Phyllis is a Russian American Jew who always been ahead of the curve when it came to food. In the 1980s she taught Chinese cooking classes. Phyllis inspired Rachel to always try different foods and learn to cook cultural cuisines.

Chef Sherry Pocknett

Wampanoag Chef and Entrepreneur, Sherry Pocknett, born and raised in Mashpee to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. Sherry credits her passion and love of food to both her parents and her tribal life-ways. She was fortunate enough to grow up in the 60's where both parents were Wampanoag and lived traditionally. A Mother from a family of Great Chefs and a Father who provided for the family by hunting, fishing and bartering.

As a child, Sherry was taught to harvest and eat by Seasonality. The Wampanoag New Year starts in the Spring, a time to give thanks to the first greens of the season from fiddlehead ferns to dandelion greens. This was the time when the herring came up the river, and other fish to follow were striped bass and bluefish from the ocean. The water is still nice and cold during the Spring so all the shellfish is amazingly good! Summers brought fresh produce from her Mother's garden right to the dinner table. This was the time for peas, salmon and an abundance of produce from the three sisters garden which consisted of corn, squash and beans. The Fall harvest of cranberries, apples, pears, green corn, potatoes, black walnuts, acorns and all types of shellfish. Winter brought the hearty comfort foods from shellfish to quail to shrimp to yankee pot roast. And of course the delectable Cape bay scallops and venison. Her favorite was always eel season spending time on the frozen bay to watch her father and brothers spear for eels.

It was not long after she entered adulthood that Sherry formed her own business and put her cooking experience forth. With over 25 years of experience, Chef Pocknett has made a name for herself and has traveled up and down the East Coast year after year to food festivals, cultural bazaars and Pow Wows, in addition to catering private and corporate events. In particular, she catered a Pow Wow at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC for 20,000 people. In addition, she has offered her culinary expertise in places like Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun and the Tony Bennett Studios of New York. To add to her experience, she is a culinary instructor involved in teaching local cooking classes in places like William Sonoma, as well as instructing a cultural youth class revolving around seasonality, harvesting and gathering, shell fishing and cooking, not to mention offering her lifetime knowledge about herbs, roots and berries.

Her love for pleasing people’s palates is what keeps her cooking and creating. Her following consists of thousands of people from across the Nation gathering and waiting in line to sample her fares and experience her tasty delights from the land, water and the skies. Sherry is, perhaps, everyone’s favorite; Indian Country’s best known East Coast Chef. 

Day 2

thursday, March 25, 2021 (2:30 pm - 3:30 pm est)

Extraction And The Value Of Nature: Who Gets To Decide?

Salomé Jashi
Director, Taming the Garden

Salomé Jashi was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1981. She first studied journalism and worked as a reporter for several years. In 2005 she was awarded a British Council scholarship to study documentary filmmaking at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Salomé’s Taming the Garden [2021] premiered at Sundance and Berlinale Forum. Her The Dazzling Light of Sunset [2016] has been awarded the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition as well as at ZagrebDox, Jihlava IDFF, FIC Valdivia and several other festivals. Her earlier work Bakhmaro [2011], made in co-production with ma.ja.de. filmproduktion and MDR/Arte, received an Honorary Mention for a Young Documentary Talent at DOK Leipzig, was awarded as the Best Central and Eastern European Documentary at Jihlava IDFF, and was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and Silver Eye Awards.
She was a fellow of Nipkow Scholarship in 2017 and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2020.

 

Mara Menahan

Mara Menahan is a botanical illustrator, an artist, and a naturalist. Through signage, participatory drawing workshops, and paintings, her work asks people to engage with their more-than-human neighbors. She began her career at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. as the in-house botanical illustrator. Since then, she has worked to document threatened landscapes across North America, painting the rare and endemic flora of the Baja peninsula, the headwaters of Bristol Bay, and the temperate rainforest communities of Southeast Alaska. In 2017, Mara joined the fisherman, Elsa Sebastion, and the biologist, Natalie Dawson, to form an all-women ground-truthing team to document the wild beauty of the coastal temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska while bearing witness to destructive logging practices. Mara has also worked seasonally as a science technician at a National Science Foundation research station on the Greenland ice sheet, assisting with atmospheric research and painting the endless variations of ice and sky.

 

Olivier Pollet
Director, Ophir

Oliver is an investigative journalist and award-winning filmmaker, producer and researcher based in the UK. Over the past decade his works have focused on corporate accountability, human rights, environmental issues and colonial legacies, working alongside indigenous communities in the Asia-Pacific region, and especially in Papua New Guinea. His latest project is the award-winning feature documentary Ophir (2020), alongside its multimedia educational counterpart The Colonial Syndrome.

Day 3

Friday, March 26, 2021 (5 PM - 6 pm EST)

Storytelling With Animals

This discussion explored the filmmakers’ experiences of writing and directing films about and with animals.

Panelists

Aner Etxebarria Moral
Director, Tabira

Aner Etxebarria is a documentary director whose passion for the animals, wildlife and indigenous worlds, has led him to write and direct several documentaries in different countries: Iceland, Mozambique, Bolivia, Mongolia and Brazil for instance. After working as a wildlife cameraman in the Mink Conservation European Programme, for the project “Life” of the European Union he ended up in the Andean Mountain range. He was living there with the Quechua community in Peru and Bolivia, directing and producing short films about the lifestyle, the weaknesses and the gender equity for Non- governmental organizations. In 2013, he founded the Film Production Company Old Port Films in Bilbao. Since then, he has directed and produced several documentaries such as Baskavígin: The Slaughter of the Basque whalers. This last documentary was selected in SSIFF, Reykjavik International film festival as well as awarded in the Richmond film festival. His last production has been "Bayandalai, the Lord of the Taiga”. A short film that digs deeply into the meaning of life and death for the Dukha. One of the most threatened indigenous communities, who lives tightly bound to their holy reindeers in the North of Mongolia. This film was awarded in 12 mountain and nature film festivals and selected in more than 35 of them, BANFF of Canada for instance. Currently, he is co-directing a documentary series along 11 countries, which will tell the audience some of the most impressive existing stories among human beings and the wildlife on our planet.


Ben Masters
Director, American Ocelot

Ben Masters is a filmmaker and writer specializing in wildlife and adventure stories. He is most known for directing the feature-length documentary The River and The Wall (SXSW 2019 Award Winner) and for producing Unbranded (Mountainfilm 2015 Audience Award Winner). Masters studied wildlife biology at Texas A&M University and founded Fin and Fur Films, a production company specializing in short films featuring wildlife research, conservation, and activism. He is the author of two books published by Texas A&M University Press and has written for National Geographic and Western Horseman. His films have been distributed on Netflix, National Geographic, STARZ, PBS, and he has worked with The Wildlife Society, Borderlands Research Institute, YETI, Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, and other great brands and NGOs. A proud Texan, Masters loves riding a good horse through new country, filming wildlife stories that haven’t been documented before, and using movies to help conserve wildlife and wild places.

 

Joe Fairbanks
Director, From the Mountains to the Ocean: Turtles of Alabama

JOE FAIRBANKS (he/him) is a conservationist and storyteller from Northern Minnesota. He earned his BA in Film & Media Studies at Dartmouth College and later worked as Dartmouth’s Sustainability Fellow. In 2018, Joe received Dartmouth Film & Media Studies’ J. Blair Watson Award, and in 2019 the Center for Jackson Hole named him an Emerging Leader in the fields of Conservation and Outdoor Recreation. His debut film, Homecoming - A Boundary Waters Story (2019), was a finalist in the 2020 Paddling Film Festival World Tour and premiered at Wild & Scenic Film Festival’s flagship festival.

 

Panel Moderator

Viveca Morris

Viveca Morris is the Executive Director of the Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School. LEAP is a multidisciplinary think-and-do tank at Yale dedicated to developing new legal and political strategies to protect animals and their habitats, and to drawing attention to the deep questions of science, conscience, and law raised by humanity’s treatment of other creatures. Viveca co-hosts the Yale University podcast "When We Talk About Animals,” which features in-depth interviews with leading thinkers about animals and what it means to be human.

 

DAY 4 - TWO PANELS

SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 2021 (1 PM - 2PM EST)

Filmmaking, Tree-Climbing, and Conservation

This discussion showcased the teams’ experience climbing trees in the remote Darien Gap rainforest and learning from the Embera tribe and their conservation efforts.

Panelists

Daniel Byers

Daniel Byers is the Director of Skyship Films. As a documentary filmmaker, he's tracked cartels along the rivers of Honduras, chased the elusive snow leopard through the mountains of Afghanistan, and rafted through the icebergs of glacial lakes in the shadow of Everest. His documentary films have been featured at numerous international festival screenings, events, and museums including the Smithsonian, Dallas Museum of Art, UN Climate Change Conferences, Banff Mountain Film Festival, Environmental Film Festival, and International Wildlife Film Festival.

Katrin Redfern

Katrin Redfern, M.Sc., M.A., M.F.A. is a multimedia producer working in film (two Sundance Festival Official Selections), theater (five Tony Award nominations), photography, radio, and podcasts, from science reporting to writing and directing audio dramas. She writes on conservation, indigenous cultures, and anthropology for various publications. Katrin is a Felipe P. De Alba Fellow at Columbia University and Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St. Andrews. She is also Creative Director of Be Electric Studios, a hub for the photo and film production community in NYC.


Andrew Stern

Andrew Stern is a photographer, cinematographer and film producer whose work has taken him to the planet's farthest reaches on countless projects. His primary areas of concentration are the social and political issues of our time, but he has also photographed campaigns for many titans of industry and technology. His photojournalism has won numerous awards and has appeared in Harpers, The New York Times, The Guardian and many other publications and exhibitions both domestically and internationally. Films he has shot and produced have been featured in and won awards at film festivals including Tribeca Film Festival, Environmental Film Festival, and Wild & Scenic Film Festival. Andrew is also the CEO of Be Electric Studios, a hub for the photo and film production community in NYC that he founded in 2014.

 

Moderator

Claudia Sanchez de Lozada

Claudia is a second-year Master of Environmental Management (MEM) candidate at the Yale School of the Environment, specializing in Climate Change Science and Solutions. Her academic interests include climate change adaptation, water resources, and international development. Prior to Yale, Claudia worked as an environmental consultant in Latin America and Africa. On her free time, she loves photographing everything and everyone around her.





SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 2021 (5 PM - 6PM EST)



From North to South: Weaving Together Climate Change Narratives 

The Climate Change narratives panel discussed the techniques, possibilities and need for linking narratives of climate change impact in communities across the world, focusing on impacts of rising sea levels.

 

Panelists

Alessandro Rovere (Director of From North to South)

Alessandro Rovere is a Director, Filmmaker, Photographer based out of Berlin. He is the director of “From North to South”, a film on stories of small island states from the North Sea to the South Pacific that are among the lowest producers of CO2, yet are the ones most affected by climate change and rising sea levels. He is always in search for creative projects around audiovisual storytelling and content creation all around the world.
Click HERE to see the agenda of films you will be able to view remotely.

Arne Dunker

Arne Dunker is the CEO of the Climate House Museum in Bremerhaven, Germany. As a major contributor to the film From North to South, Arne Dunker has several years of experience in curating thought-provoking and interactive exhibitions on climate change and its devastating impacts on communities across the world.

 

Jana Steingaesser

Jana Steingaesser studied Anthropology and Australian Indigenous Studies in Frankfurt, Heidelberg and Perth and has been working as a journalist and author with focus on climate change and water issues for many years. Why that focus? One day she asked herself why her own action lacks too far behind her knowledge, realizing that it is empathic story telling rather than abstract numbers and figures that gets people on board. Jana works for Okeanos – Foundation for the Sea (https://okeanos-foundation.org), combining environmental storytelling and project management for the protection of marine environments

Moderator

Krista Shennum

Krista Shennum (she/her) is a Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of the Environment, where she is focused on advancing climate justice and human rights. At Yale, Krista is a leader of the Climate Change Science and Solutions Learning Community and the Yale Environmental Women Student Interest Group, and she was chair of the Yale Oceans and Climate Conference.