The Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources is hosting the Inaugural Wild and Working Lands Film Festival on May 5 at the Gryphon Theatre.
The films featured at the festival look to explore the intricacies of our region, including the wild areas of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, along with other surrounding environments.
“We just hope that we can provide an engaging and encouraging experience for our viewers,” Grace Carr, the Outreach Coordinator for the Haub School, said. “We have an array of films from really all over that cover critical thinking and information, diverse perspectives, and some more creative work.”
Carr, along with the rest of the Haub School, hopes that the festival will show folks real research going on in the world, along with solutions to some of the problems facing the world today.
“We really aim to show real-world research efforts and groundbreaking solutions to a lot of environmental issues that can resonate with, not only people of Wyoming, but a lot of people throughout the American West,” Carr said.
The film festival features a variety of films, including films about “Portraits of people, places, environments, and relationships between them” and “Sharing indigenous and local ways of knowing,” according to the festival’s web page.
“We have films that focus on people and their relationship to the environment,” Carr said. “Where they work, where they recreate, where they go out leisurely.”
“We’re hoping that our audience can leave with a better understanding of the natural world and maybe spark some inspiration in their thinking about the environment, the people and wildlife that reside there.”
The film festival committee of judges will select the top entries at the festival, and two additional awards will be given by the Wyoming Migration Initiative and the Biodiversity Institute.
The festival received around 80 submissions, Carr said, which were then put through several screenings to determine the fourteen that will be shown at the festival.
“We couldn’t accept films that were tremendously long, over an hour, because we wanted a good variety of films but we also really wanted to highlight films that highlighted our values and the kind of things that we thought our viewers would like to see,” Carr said. “Communicating innovative research, groundbreaking solutions, and arguing for that paradigm shift and environmental issues.”
“Then we even mixed in some that are presenting portraits of people and then raising awareness for environmental issues and sharing indigenous and local ways of knowing. We use that as a platform to build our program by.”
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. on May 5 and films will begin showing at 7:00 p.m. The festival will also provide free popcorn and other snacks and beverages available for purchase.
Below is a list of the films that will be shown at the festival, with the film coming first and the director following:
- The Last Last Hike – Céline François
- Cracked – MAHMUT TAŞ
- High Plains Wild – Mariah Lundgren
- Creating Miracles in the desert – Carol Evans
- The Fish & the Flame – Day’s Edge Productions
- A Flyfishing Refugee – Brian Kelley
- Denizens of the Steep – Zach Montes & Dan Gibeau
- (RE)CONNECTING WILD – Jake Willers
- Elk in Paradise: Rancher, Ecologist, Hunter – Holly Fretwell
- Returning Fire to the Land – Lara Tomov
- Horse Rich Dirt Poor – Ben Masters & Charles Post
- Backcountry Bear Poles – Jeremy Roberts
- If We Take Care of the Land – Alyssa Acosta
- Game and Fish Presents-Martin Hicks – Chris Martin
