Our Surfing is Revolutionary
Big wave surfer Bianca Valenti has been competing since she was 9, much of the time against boys, since there wasn’t a girls’ division. Fed up with sexism in the sport and the sexual ways in which women surfers are portrayed, she founded the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing. This fun, animated short celebrates women surfers supporting each other and proves that women have the ability to open minds when they ride big waves.
Permafrost Now
The hard work of science — its investigative, analytical, proof-driven mission — is inspiring. Couple it with the passion and humanitarianism of youth, and even a reality as dark as climate change takes on a light of hope.
The Fate of the Wild
On the vast, desolate rangeland of Nevada, herds of wild horses still run free. When the Bureau of Land Management determines the herds have grown too large, it sends a helicopter to buzz overhead and corral the animals into pens to be either sold or slaughtered. For years, activist and artist Laura Leigh has been photographing and documenting the abuses these wild horses have suffered. The Fate of the Wild shows that the fate of these majestic, untamed symbols of the American West is intertwined with our own.
Gavin Grimm vs.
Transgender teen Gavin Grimm received permission to use the boys’ bathroom at his Gloucester, Virginia high school and happily did so without incident for seven weeks. But some parents soon caught wind and became outraged. The tumult that ensued divided a town, brought national attention to a little-known civil rights issue and thrust Grimm into the spotlight as a reluctant advocate for the transgender community. Gavin Grimm vs. is the story of diversity and inclusion in an age of changing gender roles, propelled by a boy who is simply fighting for a brighter future.
Takayna
WORLD PREMIERE
Battling a Tasmanian state government whose leader proclaims, “We have quite enough locked up forests already,” Australian “greenies” are engaged in an epic battle to save the Tarkine (Takayna in the Aboriginal language) from industrial scale logging. The Tarkine is one of the world’s last remaining temperate rainforests, a refuge for rare species, and an ancestral home for the world’s oldest continuous human culture. Takayna is a demonstration of lead activist Bob Brown’s assertion that “there is no other place like [the Tarkine] in the world.” “We have a real question here,” Brown says. “Are we going to be pessimistic and depressed or optimistic and active?”
Wolf Call
WORLD PREMIERE
It’s interesting to consider how much people love dogs and don’t love wolves. A lot of people, at least. Not including John Ramer. Ramer, seemingly a bit of a lone wolf himself, very decidedly does love wolves. And, in this short profile piece, as in the work he has chosen as his life’s purpose, he makes a case for them. Including widely re-introducing them to Colorado where he affirms the habitat for wolves is ideal.