Check Out Past CEFF Films
Explore our collection of the 2019 festival films now available for streaming and click on titles for descriptions. Titles in green indicate films featured in the CEFF 4 Kids screening, and titles with a $ indicate films available to rent.
Alaska Thaw (2019)
PLAY NOW (3 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Alaska Thaw is the 2018 Winner of the Witnessing Change Video Competition. Filmmaker Bjørn Olson’s short film uses images of the people and landscape of his home state of Alaska to create a haunting film that elicits the connection between history, memory, and landscape, and questions what it means for all of these things when thousands of years of culture and geological history starts to vanish in the space of a human lifetime.
Directed by: Bjorn Olsen
At the Source (2019)
PLAY NOW (3 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
At the Source features a county Department of Water Supply employee who zips around protecting Maui’s source water in true superhero fashion. The film won the county’s 2018 Source Water Protection video contest.
Directed by: Natalia Polinskey
Cascade Crossroads (2019)
Cascade Crossroads chronicles the amazing story of seemingly opposite interests joining forces to restore a critical wildlife corridor while improving Washington State’s vital transportation corridor over the Cascade Mountains. Told in the varied voices of the men and women who worked across ideological, political, and geographical differences to set in motion the world’s largest wildlife project of its kind, Cascade Crossroads shows what can happen – for people and the environment – when we build bridges.
Directed by: Ted Grudowski
Developing a Technology for Water Quality Testing (2019)
PLAY NOW (3 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Millions of people around the world are exposed to lead contamination of water and its harmful effects. Exposure to lead, especially in children, have lasting effects to development of brain, nervous system, and organs. It is estimated that over 5000 water systems, in US alone, have lead contamination issues. The problem is compounded by the fact that accurate and actionable detection of lead in water today is an expensive and time consuming process. My solution addresses the core issue of speedy, accurate and inexpensive detection of lead contamination, potentially helping people take preventative measures and maybe even save lives!
Directed by: Gitanjali Rao
Earth Doctor (2019)
PLAY NOW (8 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
In this short film made by Maui middle school students, Earth visits a doctor to diagnose her unusual symptoms before being sent to a therapist to get to the “root of the problem”.
Directed by: Malia Cahill
Ecological Forecasting: The Science of Predicting Ecosystems (2019)
PLAY NOW (5 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
A short animation about Ecological forecasting and how it attempts to predict environmental conditions based on interactions between organisms and their environment on a longer time scale. This field of research is important because it can provide a glimpse into the future state of an ecosystem, from wildlands, like forests and marshes, to managed lands, like farms and cities.
Directed by: Colin Williams
Eddy Covariance: Measuring an Ecosystem's Breath (2019)
PLAY NOW (4 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Eddy Covariance is how an ecosystem’s “breathing” is measured, as explained in this video. It’s the CO2 and other gases that are exchanged between soil, vegetation, and the air in an ecosystem. The data it provides helps scientists to develop models that forecast long-term trends in CO2 and greenhouse gases.
Directed by: Colin Williams
Grass Skis (2019)
PLAY NOW (4 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Butter your skis up just in time for a warm winter!
Directed by: Sebastian Aragón, Will Hassel, Owen Jolles
Iceland (2019)
PLAY NOW (2 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Allowing the voice of nature to flow over us and take us deeper into an expanded awareness is always a gift when we slow down, take time and breathe in the vastness of beautiful places. The roaring waterfalls of Iceland share their wisdom, as they pour over the volcanic formations and speak to your body with their powerful presence. Your heart beats with the intensity of the churning water, and you once again realize there is no separation between you and Nature
Directed by:
Ilan Shamir
India's Healing Forests (2019)
PLAY NOW (50 minutes)
Explore some fascinating forests across India and find out the remarkable ways in which forests can heal our body, mind and spirit.
Directed by: Nitin Das
Junk (2019)
PLAY NOW (29 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
A Marine veteran turned scientist teams up with a scrappy sailor to shed light on plastic pollution in our oceans via an extravagant stunt: sailing from California to Hawaii on a raft made of 15,000 plastic bottles. Dogged by leaky bottles, foul weather, and dwindling supplies, what was planned as a five-week spectacle slowly unravels into an 88-day odyssey.
Directed by: Christopher Jacob Jones
Living in the Future’s Past (2019) - $
RENT NOW (1 hour 40 minutes)
What kind of future to we want to live in? Jeff Bridges presents this beautifully photographed 4K tour de force of original thinking on who we are and the life challenges we face. This film upends our way of thinking and provides original insights into our subconscious motivations, the unintended consequences, and how our fundamental nature influences our future as Humankind.
Directed by: Susan Kucera
Of Apples and Anthracite (2019)
PLAY NOW (42 minutes)
Of Apples and Anthracite documents the developmental pressures on different generations in a small Western town. With the coal mines drying up, grandparents, parents, children and residents tell the story of how they arrived, how they stay or are forced to leave, and how they return.
Directed by: Clara Boland Pena
Our Lives, Our River (2019)
PLAY NOW (3 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Running from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez, serving 40 million people, the Colorado River is running dry.
Directed by: Kai Kanzer, Elan Bouchet, George Soukup, Foster Lemkau
Out of Balance (2019)
PLAY NOW (4 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Cows farts could change the world.
Directed by: JT Haberern, Cole Fenton, Gage Balderson
Return of the Desert Bighorn (2019)
PLAY NOW (9 minutes)
After all native desert bighorn sheep were eliminated from Texas by the 1960s, conservationists began the long fight for their return. ‘Return of the Desert Bighorn’ follows wildlife biologists as they capture, collar, and relocate desert bighorn to restore a healthy population in West Texas.
Directed by: Ben Masters
Run Wild Run Free (2019)
Sacred Land, Sacred Water: Confluences in the Rio Grande Valley (2019)
PLAY NOW (53 minutes)
Sacred Land, Sacred Water, a multimedia documentary, is the story of science and citizens working together to resist the oil and gas lobby’s efforts to pass a fracking-friendly ordinance in Sandoval County, New Mexico – threatening the sole drinking water aquifer for the population of the greater Albuquerque area.
Directed by: Lewis Jacobs
Six Mile Stretch (2019)
PLAY NOW (5 minutes)
A hand painted film in oils about the last wild six mile stretch of a California river, threatened by a dam proposal.
Painted birds and animals move around their painted scenery. Starring an otter, a bear and several birds.
Directed by: Carol Chambers
Streamflow on the Crystal River (2019)
PLAY NOW (3 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Low flows on the river are affecting the ecological community which includes people.
Directed by: Maddox Stainton, Braden Stainton, and Mykerson Hentschel
STROOP - Journey into the rhino horn war (2019) - $
RENT NOW (2 hours 13 minutes)
Two first-time filmmakers stop their lives to find out why rhinos are being killed for their horns. Carving out six months for the project, the women quickly find themselves immersed in a world far larger and more dangerous than they had imagined, only emerging from their odyssey four years later.
Directed by: Susan Scott
The Accidental Environmentalist (2019)
A mosquito bite decades ago leads Catherine Coleman Flowers on her life’s journey.
Directed by: Ellen Esling
Adventures of Zach and Molly (2019)
PLAY NOW (12 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Zack’s online request for a roommate is answered by Molly, a tech-savvy dumbo octopus on a mission to tell the world about the importance of the deep ocean.
Directed by: Jim Toomey
The Fracking Threat (2019)
PLAY NOW (6 minutes)
Produced by local citizen activists, this short documentary is a tool for everyone to inform and empower friends and neighbors to take action against the real threat of fracking.
Directed by: Justin Bogardus
The Human Element (2019) - $
RENT NOW (1 hour 16 minutes)
In this riveting and visually rich drama, blending art and science, we follow renowned environmental photographer James Balog as he explores the impact of wildfires, hurricanes, sea level rise, a struggling coal mining community, and our changing air. With rare compassion and heart, THE HUMAN ELEMENT highlights Americans who are on the frostlines of climate change, inspiring us to re-evaluate our relationship with the natural world.
Directed by: Mathew Testa
The Living Plant (2019)
PLAY NOW (16 minutes)
The future is here. Every once in awhile, a product comes along that changes everything. A revolutionary product that increases your productivity, creativity, health, well-being – gorgeous to look at, perfectly designed for the work space of the future. NatureRX introduces The LivingPlant™.
Directed by: Justin Bogardus
The Ocean Our Foundation (2019)
PLAY NOW (4 minutes)
Winner of 2019 CEFF Best Youth Film Award
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
This short film full of ocean imagery references the coral polyp’s central role in the Kumulipo, or Hawaiian creation chant, as a metaphor for its current role as warning sign of the destruction modern humans are doing to our oceans. The film features voiceovers by local ocean advocates Ekolu Lindsey, Lily Solano and Paige Alms about rediscovering our kuleana to protect our ocean.
Directed by: Malia Cahill
The Passage (2019)
PLAY NOW (25 minutes)
In 1974, my 20-year-old parents and uncle Andy built their own canoes, launched them into the Pacific, and became some the first people in modern history to canoe from Washington to Alaska up the Inside Passage. My brother and I grew up paddling those wooden canoes in the Virginia rivers and the 1974 adventure became legend in our family – shaping who we’ve become, how we view our parents, and how our parents view themselves. In the summer of 2017, we renovated those canoes and with our aging parents completed their 1974 journey. The Passage is a story about growing up, growing old, and the wild places that define us.
Directed by: Nathan Dappen
The Promise of JPSS (2019)
PLAY NOW (11 minutes)
There is a game changing technology leap in weather forecasting, and the benefits are saving lives and helping to protect property. As big storms become more severe, JPSS, a new Earth observation satellite from NOAA, is collecting data and high resolution images that is improving weather forecasts. As JPSS takes the pulse of the planet, extreme weather and the impacts of a changing climate can be monitored well in advance of threatening storms, fires, volcanic ash, and floods, allowing us to become a more weather ready nation…and be more resilient.
Directed by: Dan Cohen
Too Precious to Mine (2019)
PLAY NOW (10 minutes)
The Havasupai Tribe (“People of the blue-green waters”) has lived at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for centuries. But now uranium mining on the canyon’s rims is putting the tribe’s drinking water and its way of life at risk. What would you do to protect your home from uranium contamination?
Directed by: Justin Clifton
Treeline (2019)
PLAY NOW (40 minutes)
The film brings extraordinary forests in British Columbia, Japan and Nevada ‘to life’ through cinematic exploration of playful, yet powerful experience of gliding through each forest on snow. We accompany scientists who translate what the oldest trees have to teach us, illuminating the reciprocal bond between humanity and nature — a relationship we can’t survive without.
Directed by: Jordan Manley
Turn Back Time (2019)
PLAY NOW (4 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
Inspired by the 21 Pilots song Stressed Out, this mixed media musical parody employs various stop motion and animation styles to represent the environmental impacts of modern society set to an original song written by Maui middle school students.
Directed by: Malia Cahill
Under Review: Gold Butte (2019)
PLAY NOW (10 minutes)
Under Review: Gold Butte is the first film in a four film environmental dance series made to bring awareness to the threatened land of the American National Monuments. In 2017, the President drastically reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah to allow for oil and gas development: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. This reduction put 25 other national monuments and 40 national parks at risk for industrial development.
Directed by: Kelly Todd
Water from the Source (2019)
PLAY NOW (7 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
A short documentary on cutting edge atmospheric water harvesting technology, and its installation at the Denver Botanic Gardens.
Directed by: Miller Chetwynd
Wild Creatures with Dane Ottman (2019)
PLAY NOW (5 minutes)
Featured in 2019 CEFF 4 Kids Screening
This National Geographic style “mockumentary” examines the modern life and behaviors of “couchus dominus” and the consequences its lifestyle has for the Earth and its fellow species.
Directed by: Malia Cahill
Wild Hope (2019)
PLAY NOW (35 minutes)
Using personal story, science, and passion in a unique mix, Wild Hope inspires viewers to protect wild ecosystems against an unrelenting materialistic culture that’s producing social malaise and an uninhabitable planet. Our economic system fails us, but our tie to the natural world is elemental. Wild Hope challenges the economic underpinnings driving climate change, and awakens us to the possibility of a more meaningful life—a life defined not by consumption, but by compassion.
Directed by: Susan Jacobson