Mark your calendars for March 17th-27th to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital (DCEFF), featuring over 100 outstanding films to be screened virtually, as well as six special Forum discussions with preeminent filmmakers and experts focused on urgent topics for films on the environment.
The award-winning array of all-virtual film presentations offers audiences locally and worldwide flexible viewing opportunities throughout the eleven-day Festival and access to its Forum discussions. The inaugural DCEFF in 1993 was the first environmental film festival for the general public, conceived as a welcoming community event in partnership with many diverse organizations. This year's program recognizes the collaboration of many partners including museums, universities, embassies, and a range of environmental organizations. In its 30th year, the 2022 DCEFF will feature the outstanding work of over 60 women filmmakers.
Two feature filmmakers whose work will receive 2022 DCEFF Awards are Elizabeth Unger, Director of Tigre Gente and Tracey Deer, Director of Beans.
Elizabeth Unger is a National Geographic Explorer who has worked and traveled across all seven continents. She is a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Grantee for her first feature length film, Tigre Gente. Over six years Elizabeth recorded the new and deadly Jaguar trade unfolding in Bolivia's Madidi National Park. On her dangerous documentary journey, she follows Marcus, a Bolivian park ranger dedicated to the preservation of biodiversity and Madidi Park's iconic Jaguar. In exposing the growing, deadly wildlife trade, Elizabeth's film explores the cultural driver that is deeply rooted in Chinese traditional medicine and fuels the illegal massacre of Jaguars. Laurel, a Hong Kong based investigative reporter and environmentalist, pursues this new commercial and criminal phenomenon. Following Marcus and Laurel and their unrelenting work, we witness them risking life and limb to prevent the Jaguar trade from spiraling out of control. For her first feature documentary, Tigre Gente, Elizabeth Unger will receive DCEFF's Shared Earth Foundation Award for Advocacy.
Tracey Deer (Mohawk) is a screenwriter, film director, and newspaper publisher based in Kahnawoke, Quebec. She has written and directed prize winning documentaries for Rezolution Pictures, an Aboriginal-run film and television production company. She also chairs the Board of Directors of Women in View, a non-profit that promotes diversity and gender parity in Canadian media. Beans is Tracey's first narrative feature film. It won the Emerging Talent Award at the Toronto Film Festival and she was included in Variety's selection of 10 Screenwriters To Watch.
Beans chronicles the Oka Crisis– the 78 day standoff in 1990 between two Mohawk Communities and government forces in Quebec. The story is based on Tracey's own experiences as a 12 year old and similarly features a 12 year old girl as the film's central character. The outstanding young actor featured in this compelling coming-of-age story is Kiawentiio, who portrays Tekehentahkwa, nicknamed “Beans”. It is an intimate and emotional story of a Mohawk family's involvement at the time of a historic, frightening standoff to save from the development of a golf course and townhouses on ancestral Mohawk land and burial grounds. Tracey Deer will receive DCEFF's 2022 William W. Warner Beautiful Swimmers Award, given by the Warner/Kaempfer family for a film that reflects a spirit of reverence for the natural world. It will be presented in partnership with the National Museum of the American Indian.
In celebration of the Festival's 30th Anniversary, DCEFF introduces The Forum; a program that creates a unique space for leading thinkers and advocates to come together with filmmakers and the media industry to address the most important environmental issues of our day, and how film is uniquely situated to bring these issues to light. Among the six special programs, Jessica Edwards, Director of Impact & Partnerships at Doc Society will moderate a panel entitled The Big Bang: Films Making Impact. Katerina Cizek, Artistic Director, Co-Founder and Executive Producer of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab will moderate a panel entitled The New Frontier of Climate Change Storytelling.
We look forward to having you join us for all the exciting programs in our 30th Anniversary Festival between March 17th - 27th. Visit dceff.org for more information and tickets. The code DCEWEFF30 (case-sensitive) takes 25% off any pass or ticket order.
Flo Stone, Founder
Samantha Plakun, Program Manager
Monica Schorn, Festival Coordinator
DCEFF is a proud member of the Catalogue for Philanthropy’s 2020-21 class of nonprofits.