Made just eight years apart, Beaver Valley and Bambi illustrate the two types of films for which the Walt Disney Company was famous in the mid-20th Century. The second of Disney’s True-Life Adventures, a genre of nature films which saved the studio from bankruptcy, Beaver Valley  follows the exploits of "nature’s chief water conservationist – the beaver" on the Continental Divide.  Don't miss out on the Frog Symphony, one of the most memorable comic scenes in wildlife film history.  The animated classic Bambi is a film about natural innocence, the renewal of life, and the alienation of humans from nature told through the coming-of-age story of a young deer as he takes his place as the Prince of the Forest. Directed by David Hand, Bambi features an array of unforgettable scenes (the death of Bambi's mother will leave you teary-eyed) and remains just as beautiful and heartbreaking as when you saw it as a youngster.

On December 3rd 1984, over 40 tons of highly poisonous gas leaked out of the pesticide factory of Union Carbide in Bhopal, India. 8,000 people died in the worst chemical disaster in the history of humankind - and since then 20,000 have died from after-effects. Set amidst this tragedy, Bhopal Express is a love story seen through the eyes of newlyweds Verma and Tara, and their friend Bashir. Eager to start a family, Verma works as a supervisor at the Union Carbide plant despite the warnings of Bashir, who quit due to unsafe working conditions. When Bashir's worst fears are realized and Tara life is endangered, Verma must race against time to save her.

Darwin's Nightmare traces the devastating downward spiral that was triggered by two relentless killing machines: the Nile perch which, over the course of a few decades, ate through everything that used to live in Tanzania's Lake Victoria; and the foreign capitalists who introduced that non-native fish in order to sell it to European consumers. Losing out to both of these were the local Tanzanians who once lived off the lake's bounty and now, literally, are left with bones and rotting carcasses. Eventually, the filmmakers discover what is coming into Africa on the planes hired to take the fish out, further proving the depth of the corruption and evil at the heart of this situation. (Description adapted from the Wisconsin Film Festival.)
Web site: http://www.darwinsnightmare.com/

In their signature upbeat comedic style, Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand weave an entertaining, character-driven tale about the mother of all problems: global warming. The film explores whether North America is finally "getting" global warming in the wake of the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action. In their own ironic and desperate way these "so-sad-they-are-funny"-vignettes of apathy, frustration and individual activism might very well be the thing that finally speaks to the public. In a society numbed by frequent and generally overblown prophecies of doom, the film tackles the truly daunting task of enlightenment and inspiration for action with wit and style. (Description adapted from the Sundance Film Festival.)
Web site: http://www.everythingscool.org/

This double-billing is an inquiry into the transformations of culture and place. Fire, Burn, Babylon follows the fortunes of a crew of Montserratian Rastafarians, who once lived in spiritual retreat in the Soufriere hills. After a volcanic eruption destroyed their island home, they resettle in London and reinvent themselves as "rude-boy" rappers and small time hustlers on the night-club circuit.  The Split Horn movingly documents the struggles of a Hmong shaman and his family to keep their ancient traditions alive as they find themselves displaced from the mountains of Laos to the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin.

Flock of Dodos is the first feature documentary to present both sides of the Intelligent Design/Evolution clash that appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek in 2005. Filmmaker and former evolutionary ecologist Dr. Randy Olson tries to make sense of the debate by visiting his home state of Kansas. At first it seems the problem lies with intelligent design – a movement labeled recently as "breathtaking inanity" by a federal judge – but when a group of evolutionists convene for a night of poker and discussion they end up sounding themselves like … a flock of dodos. 
Web site: http://www.flockofdodos.com/

Penguins are arguably the world's most loved animals. From documentaries like March of the Penguins to animated feature films like Happy Feet, penguins have proven to be the kings of the box office. And the impression given of penguins is typically the same: they are caring partners and loving parents; they are cute comic clowns. But, as filmmaker and penguin expert, Lloyd Spencer Davis, shows: the persona of penguins portrayed on the screen bears little resemblance to the real thing. Penguins are tough not cute — more brutal thugs than Barbie substitutes. Neither are they the paragons of virtue that a particular film would have us believe: it is not so much that "love will find a way" than it is their sheer determination to have sex with anything that moves. Actually, when you put it like that, maybe they are like movie stars?

Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award–winning Harlan County, U.S.A. unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners' strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. Featuring a haunting soundtrack — with legendary country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, Sarah Gunning, and Florence Reece — the film is a heartbreaking record of the thirteen-month struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line. "A fascinating and moving work. Its strength lies chiefly in its ability to illuminate the peculiar frightfulness and valor of coal-mining" (New York Times).

Birds in flight double feature! High Over the Borders uses stunning aerial photography to document the international migration of thousands of wild birds of various species. Produced by the New York Zoological Society, in collaboration with the legendary documentary arm of the National Film Board of Canada and the U.S. Office of the Coordination of Inter-American Affairs, the film uses birds to promote Pan-Americanism and preach the moral value of nature's shared ownership.  Originally conceived as a film to "carry a message of democracy and friendship below the Rio Grande," The Three Caballeros similarly used animated birds to promote US/Latin America relations and was the first Disney feature to combine animation and live action footage. The jokes are spot-on and the animation gorgeous in this tale of Donald Duck and his two Latin buds — the Brazilian parrot Joe Carioca and Panchito the Mexican rooster — who take Donald on a spectacular and outrageous tour of countries and cultures in Latin America, highlighted by dance and song. 

Director Jennifer Baichwal captures the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky, who creates large-scale photographs of "manufactured landscapes" - quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Baichwal extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky's photographs, allowing audiences to meditate on how profoundly humans have impacted the planet. It shows both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste. True to Burtynsky's refusal to be didactic, the film presents issues of complexity without simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions.
Web site: http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=manufacturedlandscapes

An amazing and breathtakingly beautiful journey into the minute and intimate world of insect life, Microcosmos proves that, "Mother Nature remains the greatest special effects wizard of all" (New York Times). Using specially designed cameras and powerful magnifying lenses, biologists-turned-filmmakers Nuridsany and Pérennou delve into a simple French meadow and explore the fascinating everyday behavior of thousands of beetles, caterpillars, ants, and other insects in what they call, "a return to science-fiction movies, [with] the same exoticism, the same excitement in the face of the unknown." Winner of five César Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscar).

Based on his popular manga series of the same name, Hayao Miyazaki's animated Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds tells the story of a princess growing up in a feudal-like world a thousand years after a war has devastated much of Earth's environment and technology. Utilizing her gift for communicating with giant insects and possessing a love of living things, she sets out on a perilous journey to defend all life against destruction. With Nausicaä Miyazaki begins to explore elements he would develop more fully in his later films (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away): compassionate heroines, strong interpersonal relationships, and a call for an ecologically sustainable way of life.

In 1997 Bill Kennedy unearthed an old reel of a silent film called Navajo Boy, which his late father produced in Monument Valley in the 1950s. Seeking to understand his father's work on the Navajo Reservation, Kennedy works with documentarian Jeff Spitz to return the film to the people in it, including Elsie Mae Cly Begay, who recognizes her long-lost infant brother John Wayne Cly, who was adopted by white missionaries in the 1950s. Elsie tells her family's story for the first time, offering a unique perspective to the history of the American west. When her brother learns of the film, the family reunites and the Clys shed light on the Native side of picture making and uranium mining in Monument Valley. The film triggered a federal investigation of uranium houses on the Navajo Nation and forced the U.S. Department of Justice to pay a $100,000 compensation check to a former uranium miner.
Web site: http://www.navajoboy.com/

French filmmaker Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) was a pioneer of astonishingly beautiful science films, which poetically explored a twilight realm of bats, seahorses, and octopuses, among other creatures. In collaboration with his partner Genevieve Hamon, Painlevé made over 200 science and nature films that document nature’s authentic ‘magic realism,’ and was a favorite of the surrealists and avant-gardists. Painlevé counted amongst his friends and admirers Antonin Artaud, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Vigo, and Luis Buñuel. We present a program of five of Painlevé's most bewitching films, including:

• The Seahorse (L'Hippocampe) (France, 1934, 15 min., BetaSP)
• The Vampire (Le Vampire) (France, 1945., 9 min., 35mm)
• Freshwater Assassins (Les Assassins d'eau douce) (France, 1947, 25 min., BetaSP)
• The Love Life of the Octopus (Les Amours de la pieuvre) (France, 1965, 13 min., BetaSP)
• Acera or The Witches' Dance (Acera ou Le Bal des sorcieres) (France, 1972, 13 min.,
  BetaSP)

In 1928, William Douglas Burden, a wealthy explorer and naturalist, whose life inspired the making of King Kong, traveled to Lake Temiskaming in northwestern Quebec to make an "authentic" picture about the North American Indian before contact with whites.  The film features remarkable performances by Native American actors Molly Spotted Elk and Chief Buffalo Long Lance, as well as those by Chauncey Yellow Robe, great nephew of Sitting Bull, and local Ojibwa villagers.  Cinematographer Marcel le Picard used light and shadow to great effect in creating an image of a vanished past, and audiences were spellbound by the "the most stupendous sight of wild game in North America since the bygone days of the buffalo."   In 1930, the New York Evening Post declared the film deserved a "Pulitzer Prize as the best American dramatic creation of the year."

Famed French undersea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau documents the voyage of his ship Calypso across the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, and creates a lyrical meditation on the awesome mysteries of oceanic life. "Surely the most beautiful and fascinating documentary of its sort ever filmed ... The only trouble with the whole thing is it makes you want to strap on an Aqua-Lung and go!" (Bosley Crowther, New York Times). Co-directed by French New Wave director Louis Malle (Au revoir les enfants) and winner of Oscar for Best Documentary and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The film will be accompanied by the short Locomotion in Water, an experimental documentary about seeing movement, doing science, and filming fish in Naples, Italy. Moving between past and present, text and image, travelogue and reverie — Locomotion in Water interweaves the reflections of the nineteenth-century chronophotographer with the animating impulses of a modern-day filmmaker.

Director Rolf de Heer collaborated closely with the Ramingining Aboriginal community of the Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory to create this absorbing and stylish paean to the rich oral traditions of Aboriginal Australia. On their annual expedition, Minygululu discovers that his younger brother Dayindi covets his third and youngest wife. To help him live "the proper way," Minygululu tells Dayindi a cautionary tale of wrong love, kidnapping, sorcery, and inept revenge, set in the mythical past, replete with bawdy humor.  Blending anthropology and modern storytelling, Ten Canoes features inspired black and white cinematography for the framing device and saturated color for the story within the story, and captures the full otherworldly potential of the Arafura swamp region.
Web site: http://www.tencanoes.com.au/tencanoes/