After taking a year off due to COVID, the Eugene Environmental Film Festival is returning in full swing. While the festival usually takes place in the fall, this April it’s offering Eugene a hybrid of in-person and online events. Films centered around the Earth, environment and sustainable living are available to watch both online and in-person at the Broadway Metro. Producing such a festival is no easy feat, especially in the midst of pandemic restrictions lifting, and the EEFF team dealt with numerous uncertainties due to COVID this year.
The EEFF was born in 2018. “My goal was to model it after the Wild and Scenic in Nevada City,” Michele Eggers, the producer of the festival, said. “When I moved to Eugene I wanted to create something like that.”
The Eugene festival was centered downtown so movie-goers could walk from venue to venue. In 2020 the festival went completely hybrid, and they took a break in 2021 because of the pandemic.
This year the EEFF is partnered with Emerald Earth Film Festival, a festival at UO’s campus through the Center for Environmental Futures. “Our festivals are kind of different, so this partnership is a marrying of the two,” Eggers said. While the EEFF takes film submissions from anyone, the Emerald Earth Film Festival handpicks their films with a theme. Eggers’ job entails just about everything this year, from cutting the trailer to communicating with filmmakers, because of the festival’s small crew. The two festivals are mostly collaborating on the in-person events at the Broadway Metro theater.
“What happens with COVID is that people are impacted,” Eggers said. “It impacted our team, and there just wasn’t enough capacity to put on the festival in October.” Eggers is grateful for the partnership with the Emerald Earth Film Festival because of the new energy it brings.
The virtual element of the festival ran through April 24. “There are over 60 films that are available to a global audience during the runtime of the festival,” Eggers said. These films cover a myriad of topics, ranging from efficient waste management in Ireland to ending wolf hunting in the United States. They are available to watch on the EEFF website.
“The film festival doesn’t have a particular theme,” Eggers said. “It’s looking at how we enjoy the environment, but there are also films about corporate exploitation and climate justice and how we resist that.” Eggers explained that the team wanted the festival to be holistic and capture the experiences everyone has with the environment.
“All of the films are unique in their own way,” Eggers said, “so I always really enjoy them, from the short to the feature-length films.”
I watched quite a few of the films on the EEFF website, with “Climb it Change” and “A Fisher’s Right to Know” being two of my favorites. “Climb it Change” looks at the effects of global warming through a rock climber’s route in France. He details the effects of climate change on rock climbing and how he sees the effects of global warming up close in his sport. “Climb it Change” was moving and told a unique story, and with a run-time of just under 20 minutes, it’s definitely worth a watch.
“A Fisher’s Right to Know” details the pollution of the Coosa River in Alabama, a river that many depend on to feed their families. Fish in the river have high levels of toxins in them, making them unsafe to eat, but not many people know. “A Fisher’s Right to Know” was wonderfully made. It followed families that had a history of fishing in the area and the local riverkeepers in their efforts to preserve the Coosa River.
“Our goal was always to keep the film festival community focused and accessible to folks,” Eggers said. “Because often film festivals are really expensive.” A weekend pass for the EEFF is always $25, and all the films online are free. “It’s such a beautiful labor of love that it’s hard to think of the hard work putting on the EEFF as a challenge,” Eggers said.
In a time so focused on the negative aspects of climate change, the Eugene Environmental Film Festival is creating a space to enjoy nature as it is. It’s easy to get caught in an echo chamber focusing on the planet’s impending doom, but the films shown at the EEFF do more than point out the negatives of our planet’s current state. The films capture the frustration we all face regarding climate change, but it also offers glimmers of hope, and celebrates the beauty of planet Earth.
