Environmental Film Festival 2019

OVERVIEW

Ready to watch some cutting edge grass-roots environmental action? Buckle up. Premiering this month at the Environmental Film Festival are 6 shorts, created from start to finish as the EFFA Community Storytelling Project. 

In 2019,  Digital Storytellers continued our partnership with the Environmental Film Festival for the third year, to skill-up community environmental organisations to create their own films using smartphones and affordable equipment.

With support from Bank Australia, participants from environmental organisations across Melbourne participated in 2 action-packed days of face-to-face training, received support from the expert mentors from our team, and finished the process ready to project their films packed audiences at the festival, sharing the screen with the award-winning feature films carefully curated by EFFA’s dedicated team. Talk about jumping off the deep end! 

POLLINATOR ALLIANCE 

Pollinators are responsible for 1 in 3 bites of food. Meet Benedict, the Practical Bee Keeper and some of Melbourne’s youngest beekeepers. The Australian Pollinator Alliance’s mission is to promote the health of bees and all pollinators, critical to our food and natural environment, through education, research and conservation.

COMPOST DEPOT 

Hey internet, we know you love cats. But did you know cat’s LOVE compost?

Let’s hear it for Compost Depot’s compost cat, Fritz, shining in this film, adaptly title “Fritz, The Compost Cat”. This smooth-talking, easy-living feline breaks down the reasons Compost Depot rules. From providing delicious food for gardens and chickens to diverting paper and food scraps from the landfill to getting a certain cat an endless supply of community-sourced head scratches.

COMMUNITY GROCER 

Community Grocers put on weekly affordable fresh food markets to support healthy connected communities. With produce 60% cheaper than surrounding stores, costumers can buy with dignity and choice. But don’t take our word for it.  Listen to costumers’ explain the community and connection that has flourished around the markets. 

3000ACRES

3000acres recognizes the potential of the vacant concrete lot as an untapped opportunity to be transformed into vibrant and productive open spaces.  General Manager, Morgan’s vision and practical description meets community impact statements in this stunning little film. “Community gardens bring people together”, says Andrew, at the lush Willsmere Kitchen Garden. We agree! 

3000acres tackles urban food insecurity by unlocking pockets of underutilised land to enable people to grow food and build community in tiny verges on street corners, vacant car parks, public parks and large scale empty lots awaiting development. 

PARENTS FOR CLIMATE ACTION

For parents to young children, the catastrophic timelines of climate crises, tracking them against their children’s lifetime, are not abstract at all. With some of the strongest motivation for citizen-led action, many parents relate to this films’ protagonists’ scarcity of time and space to focus. APCA provides easy ways for parents to make their voices count. 

ROVING REFILLS  

“Our recycling crisis is actually a packaging crisis”

In this edgy film, Roving Refills expose the root of our ‘packaging crisis’ and present us with their solutions: A mobile detergent refill station, BYO bottles. 

All we can say is “YES, please!”