Princeton Environmental Film Festival

The Princeton Environmental Film Festival is an annual signature event of Princeton Public Library.

Founded in 2007, the festival’s mission is to share exceptional documentary films and to engage the community in exploring environmental sustainability from a wide range of perspectives.

Screenings are free and often accompanied by a Q&A with directors and producers and talks by invited speakers. The festival also presents related events with community partners to provide opportunities to participate in sustainable actions and initiatives year-round.

As the festival evolves and its sustainability is considered, organizers are mindful of expanding its reach while maintaining its identity as a meaningful local event.

Schedule of Events:

Bird Safe

Hundreds of millions of birds die each year in the United States after crashing into buildings.

A small group of Princeton University students witnessed this problem on their own campus. Then they got to work figuring out a solution, and convincing the university’s administration to adopt it. This is a small but important story that shows how young people can make a positive difference in the world, and inspire others to do the same.

Director
Jared Flesher

Runtime:
10 minutes

Producer
Matt Brinn

Executive Producer
Sarah Boll

Chasing Time

If a single photo can inspire change, how influential are a million images? Over the course of the 15-year Extreme Ice Survey project, photographer James Balog and his team brought some of the world’s first and most compelling visual evidence of climate change to the global stage as he depicted the rapid melting of glaciers around the world. Thoughtfully helmed by acclaimed director Jeff Orlowski-Yang (Chasing Ice, Chasing Coral, The Social Dilemma) and first-time filmmaker Sarah Keo, Chasing Time is a meditative exploration of time and mortality, following James and his crew as they bring the decades-long project to a close, cataloging more than one million images in the process. The short documentary reunites James and the Emmy-winning team behind Chasing Ice to capture the end of the epic undertaking and spotlight the power of an intergenerational effort to seed hope and inspire action toward a sustainable future.

Director
Jeff Orlowski-Yang, Sarah Keo

Runtime
39 minutes

Producer
Brette Ragland, Larissa Rhodes, Jeff Orlowski-Yang, Stacey Piculell

Executive Producer
Linda A. Cornfield, David J. Cornfield, Melinda Ryan, Rick Reed, Barry Schuler, Lou Buglioli, Natalie Orfalea, In Partnership with Zarpet Family Foundation, Contributing Producer Robina Riccitello

The Endless Tide

Aboriginal rangers in the remote community of Mapoon in northern Australia are faced with the overwhelming task of cleaning up tonnes of plastic waste washing up on their beaches day after day, wave after wave.

Director
Michael Portway, Tim Brown

Runtime
15 minutes

Producer
Michael Portway, Tim Brown, Max Carter

Holding Back the Tide

A woman swallows a pearl. A subway car falls to the ocean floor. A deluge bursts through the cracks of New York City. In every borough, oyster shells are pried apart and carefully returned to sea. A chorus of farmers, diners, sous chefs, fishmongers, activists, and landscape architects colloquializes the oyster’s many lifecycles. These educational snapshots about the bivalve’s ecological role, mating habits, communal living, and historical presence take on new meaning and flirt with the mythic. Underwater dances and poetic addresses blend the human and nonhuman worlds. The oyster as a water filter, carbon capturer, storm barrier, and habitat maker transcends its environmental promise and becomes a queer icon of New York City’s unlikely survival story.

Retracing cyclical ecologies for the largest metropolitan area in the United States calls upon an existential reimaging of a sustainable future. Out with the narratives of bootstraps and capitalist urban individualism; in with the water-bound, the intergenerational, the queer collectivity. Once New York City was built by the oysters. Now, it is built anew.

Director
Emily Packer

Runtime
77 minutes

Screenwriter
Emily Packer, Josh Margolis

Producer
Emily Packer, Trey Tetreault, Josh Margolis, Ben Still, Liz Beeson

The Endless Tide

Aboriginal rangers in the remote community of Mapoon in northern Australia are faced with the overwhelming task of cleaning up tonnes of plastic waste washing up on their beaches day after day, wave after wave.

Director
Michael Portway, Tim Brown

Producer
Michael Portway, Tim Brown, Max Carter

Runtime
15 minutes

Holding Back the Tide

A woman swallows a pearl. A subway car falls to the ocean floor. A deluge bursts through the cracks of New York City. In every borough, oyster shells are pried apart and carefully returned to sea. A chorus of farmers, diners, sous chefs, fishmongers, activists, and landscape architects colloquializes the oyster’s many lifecycles. These educational snapshots about the bivalve’s ecological role, mating habits, communal living, and historical presence take on new meaning and flirt with the mythic. Underwater dances and poetic addresses blend the human and nonhuman worlds. The oyster as a water filter, carbon capturer, storm barrier, and habitat maker transcends its environmental promise and becomes a queer icon of New York City’s unlikely survival story.

Retracing cyclical ecologies for the largest metropolitan area in the United States calls upon an existential reimaging of a sustainable future. Out with the narratives of bootstraps and capitalist urban individualism; in with the water-bound, the intergenerational, the queer collectivity. Once New York City was built by the oysters. Now, it is built anew.

Director
Emily Packer

Runtime
77 minutes

Screenwriter
Emily Packer, Josh Margolis

Producer
Emily Packer, Trey Tetreault, Josh Margolis, Ben Still, Liz Beeson

The Researcher

What would you sacrifice to save the planet? Gianluca Grimalda, university researcher, is the first employee ever fired for having refused to catch a plane for environmental reasons. He did an act of civil disobedience to save 5 tons of CO2 and to raise awareness on the causes of climate change. Was it worth it?
Seaweed Stories

Director
Paolo Casalis

Runtime
71 minutes

Producer
Paolo Casalis

The Volunteers: Mountain Rescue Brings Us Home

Two mountain rescue organizations—one near Seattle, Washington, the other in Tyrol, Austria—are linked by a surprising historical connection. Take a journey with historian Mark S. Weiner from America to Austria and back again as he considers the origins and meaning of their work. Both groups have grown from a strong sense of place ... because before you can save a stranger, you first must love your home.

Runtime
57 minutes

Director
Mark S. Weiner, David Ritsher

Screenwriter
Mark S. Weiner, David Ritsher

Producer
Mark S. Weiner, David Ritsher

Way of the Shepherd

Away from his family for up to 3 years at a time, Peruvian shepherd, Christian Aliaga works the hillsides of northern California with a massive herd of goats and two exceptional Border Collies. Together they roam the land conducting wildfire mitigation with their old-world, natural approach to vegetation management. Christian shares his affinity for nature, the animals he works with, and a glimpse at his timeless trade in the modern age.

Runtime
9 minutes

Director
Matthew Boyd

Screenwriter
N/A

Producer
Matthew Boyd

Wild Blue and You: The Save Coastal Wildlife Story

Finding Nature. Finding Self. The Jersey shore's first trans woman environmental leader!

Jenna Reynolds, President/Founder of Save Coastal Wildlife nonprofit, recounts her journey to become an environmental educator as a trans woman. Detailing how her connection to New Jersey's coastal wildlife helped her find the courage to live life as her authentic self every day. Jenna's story is proof that the resiliency of nature not only transcends its greatest issues, but the greatest internal struggles of the human spirit, perpetuating the importance of the interconnection of all life... in nature and in our society.

Director
Gavin Shwahla

Producer
Gavin Shwahla

Co-Producer
Save Coastal Wildlife non-profit

Runtime
20 minutes