Our collection of short water stories from around the world… especially curated for our short film lovers!
After the initial live-streamed event, your ticket will give you
access to the recording until Sunday, November 15, 2020.
Cold Stunned
Filmmakers:
Henley Moore & David Coffey
USA | 2019 | 12 min
Canadian Premiere
Every year, National Aquarium Animal Rescue cares for dozens of cold-stunned sea turtles after they strand on the shores of Cape Cod amid cold weather snaps. Often suffering from pneumonia and infections when rescued in Massachusetts, the turtles are transported to Baltimore for long-term treatment. Each turtle's path through rehabilitation not only drives home the efforts of conservation efforts worldwide, but also helps connect staff, volunteers, and the public with the natural world, helping to inspire a new way to see the ocean and our connection to it.
Child of the Cenote
Filmmaker: André Musgrove
BAHAMAS | 2019 | 5 min
Canadian Premiere
CHILD OF THE CENOTE is a short film about a freediver embarking on an underwater journey throughout the underwater caves of the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, called Cenotes. She follows the light that shines within the deepest and darkest part of the caves only to discover something she least expects. This entire film was shot freediving (on breath-hold).
Green Gold?
Filmmaker: Nicky Milne
UK | 2019 | 26 min
Canadian Premiere
As the global demand for the superfood avocados has soared, Chile has become the world’s third-largest exporter of avocados. But the community of Petorca, Chile, says drought, and the insatiable appetite for avocado has brought desperate water shortages.
This film explores a quiet water war. Allegations of water theft, of exploitation, and of death threats against those who speak out, are rife. “When you export our avocados, you export our water”, says one community member.
The government says it is bringing change but as exports continue to grow, GREEN GOLD? explores an uncomfortable global moral dilemma.
Italy & (This Is) Water
Filmmakers: Ioan Gavriel & Anja Franziska Plaschg
AUSTRIA | 2019 | 5.5 min
Ontario Premiere
A single day: from the tender break of dawn to the darkest night. One out of many days to come? Quite possibly the very last. A long farewell, an ultimate goodbye to a life we have grown to hold dear. Leading to a head-on dive into a new reality, into a new state of being.
WATER
Filmmaker: John Harvey
AUSTRALIA | 2017 | 12.5 min
Set in 2047, with strict population controls in place, heavily pregnant Layla manages to evade authorities but finds herself stranded on a dry salt lake with little water.
Call of the Lake
Filmmaker: Cassidy McAuliffe
CANADA | 2018 | 4 min
Toronto Premiere
CALL OF THE LAKE is a short documentary about a Grandmother and Granddaughter's shared love for a Lake in Northern Ontario. The film was shot in Sudbury, Ontario where each person in the production currently resides.
The Beaver Believers
Filmmaker: Sarah Koenigsberg
USA | 2018 | 20 min
Ontario Premiere
THE BEAVER BELIEVERS shares the urgent yet whimsical story of an unlikely cadre of activists - a biologist, a hydrologist, a botanist, an ecologist, a psychologist, and a hairdresser - who share a common goal: restoring the North American Beaver, that most industrious, ingenious, furry little bucktoothed engineer, to the watersheds of the American West. THE BEAVER BELIEVERS encourage us to embrace a new paradigm for managing our western lands, one that seeks to partner with the natural world rather than overpower it. As a keystone species, beaver enrich their ecosystems, creating the biodiversity, complexity, and resiliency our watersheds need to absorb the impacts of climate change. Beavers can show us the way and even do much of the work for us, if only we can find the humility to trust in the restorative power of nature and our own ability to play a positive role within it.
Hall of Fishes
Filmmaker: Jennifer Boles
USA | 2019 | 9 min
Canadian Premiere
HALL OF FISHES recomposes some of the earliest moving images of the ocean floor to illuminate the colonial webs of power and notions of limitless that have shaped the fraught relationship between humans and the sea.
Pilliga Rising
Filmmaker: Mark Pearce
AUSTRALIA | 2019 | 40 min
Toronto Premiere
A salt-of-the-earth farmer, a German potter, a young Indigenous multimedia artist and an experienced citizen scientist rise up to protect their communities against a proposed coal seam gas-field in the Pilliga forest; a million acres of iconic Australian bush. An oil and gas corporation plan to drill 850 wells through the Great Artesian Basin – one of the largest underground freshwater reservoirs in the world – which flows beneath the Pilliga. Now, the people who live in this rural New South Wales region are united to protect the land and water against this threat and determined to win their freedom.
Emcee: Rick Miller
is a writer/director/actor/musician/educator who has performed in five languages on five continents, and who Entertainment Weekly called “one of the 100 most creative people alive today”. He has personally created shows such as the BOOM Trilogy and MacHomer, as well as many family oriented pieces and an educational animated series called Kidoons with Craig Francis. Rick is from Montreal, and lives in Toronto with his partner Stephanie Baptist and their two daughters.
After the initial live-streamed event, your ticket will give you
access to the recording until Sunday, November 15, 2020.
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