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Looking back at 2011, this has certainly been the year of the protester, something that Time Magazine crystalized with its Person of the Year issue. Of course the magazine rightly mentions the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements, but they neglected to write about one of the most significant protesters of the year: Tim DeChristopher. DeChristopher is currently serving two years in prison for disrupting a federal auction of land for natural gas and oil drilling.

From Festival Director David Holbrooke:

In 2008, Mountainfilm regulars Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, and Renan Ozturk attempted to climb the NW Face of Meru's Shark Fin in India, which had stymied an all-star list of climbers including Anker's mentor, Mugs Stump. This team wasn't able to make it to the top either, but Samsara, an outstanding film directed by the ridiculously talented Ozturk that resulted from the expedition, won Mountainfilm's Charlie Fowler Prize at the 2009 festival. The three men reunited this year to take another shot at it and on October 2, made mountaineering history by being the first people to climb the North West Face of the peak. Chin sent photos from the expedition and Ozturk recently responded to questions from Mountainfilm Festival Director David Holbrooke.

In the U.S. 40 percent of all urban trips are less than two miles, but 90 percent of those trips are made by car. GOOD Magazine, along with CLIF Bar, has introduced the Two Mile Challenge to try and get more people to make those short trips on their bicycle. To further that effort, the magazine has offered up the GOOD Guide to Biking for the Planet, which has a lot of helpful information on biking.

From GOOD:

"Don't just run your errands—bike them! If you consider that each mile you travel by bike instead of car prevents one pound of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere, the benefit of bike riding becomes clear."
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Tim DeChristopher is serving a two year term in Federal prison near Ferlong, California. In a recent letter to Mountainfilm Festival Director David Holbrooke, he wrote:

"Overall, I'm doing really well. The moving around before I got here was stressful but it's been nice to settle in here the last couple of weeks. In a way, I have been waiting to get here for over two and a half years, so I actually have a relieving sense of moving on with my life."

If you want to write him, you can get all the details here. Also, check out a recent interview Mountainfilm 2007 guest Jeff Goodell did with DeChristopher for Rolling Stone.

Ben Knight and Travis Rummel of Felt Soul Media brought the story of Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay to Mountainfilm audiences in 2008 with their film, Red Gold. The issue of whether a copper and gold mine will wreck this pristine salmon run is still up in the air with many groups trying to prevent it, including a major push by the NRDC. Even though they have enlisted Robert Redford in this battle, it's an issue that could still use help.

At Mountainfilm, we look for films that have impact and now, there is a new study by the Center for Social Media about just that. This is a five year evaluation, funded in part by the Ford Foundation, of the best ways to make sure social issues documentaries reach and impact an audience.

"People come in as participants in a media project and leave recognizing themselves as members of a public—a group of people commonly affected by an issue. They have found each other and exchanged information on an issue in which they all see themselves as having a stake. In some cases, they take action based on this transformative act of communication.

This is the core function of public media 2.0 for a very simple reason: Publics are the element that keeps democracies democratic."

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Moving Planet is a day to put our demands for climate action into motion—marching, biking, skating—calling for the world to go beyond fossil fuels. This past weekend, at over 2,000 events in 175+ countries, we let leaders know that a movement is rising to move our planet forward to a clean energy future.

In Telluride, TNCC put together another fantastic event (some of the attendees are pictured above). Among the many other interesting presentations, Mountainfilm in Telluride provided a screening of Pete McBride's film Chasing Water.

From Bill McKibben:

Activists are making all kinds of statements these days. Some artists and athletes made this one on the Matilija Dam near Ojai, California. The dam is scheduled to come down at some point, but the demolition plan is unclear, and this action will surely prompt closer attention.

Curt Ellis spoke at the 2011 Awareness Into Action Symposium about his new organization, FoodCorps. Now, his exciting work is featured in the NY Times. If you want to join up, let us know and we will connect you to Curt.

FoodCorps, which started last week, is symbolic of just what we need: a national service program that aims to improve nutrition education for children, develop school gardening projects and change what’s being served on school lunch trays.

Tim DeChristopher, two-time Mountainfilm in Telluride festival special guest and well-known climate activist, was sentenced on July 26 in Federal Court in Salt Lake City to two years in prison for his activism in disrupting a corrupted oil-gas lease sale by BLM in Utah.  Immediately after sentencing Tim was taken by Federal Marshalls directly to jail to begin serving his sentence.  Over 200 people were at the Federal Court House in support of Tim and his climate awareness actions.  Upon hearing the sentence and learning that Tim was taken directly to jail to prevent him from speaking, against the norm in these types of cases, many of Tim's supporters decided to speak for Tim in the form of a spontaneous protest to proclaim that citizen voices cannot easily be silenced.  Twenty-six were arrested in this peaceful protest and taken to jail.  Two of those arrested were from Telluride; locals Chris Meyers and Skip Edwards.  Local Tellurider's have set up a defense fund to help with Chris's and Skip's fines with the remainder going to help Tim DeChristopher's appeal expenses, said by his pro-bono attorney's to be in excess of $50,000.