Save the Date: The 2024 Wild & Scenic Film Festival is scheduled for Friday, April 19, 2024
Now accepting sponsorships for 2024!
Ohio River Foundation (ORF) will again bring one of the largest environmental film festivals in North America to Cincinnati this spring. The Wild & Scenic Film Festival inspires environmental activism and a love for nature through film. This year, the festival will be on Friday, April 19 at Woodward Theater in Over-the-Rhine.
The Festival works with environmental groups across the US to host local film festivals as a way to reach into their communities, inspire activism, increase awareness for grassroots environmental causes, and generate critical funds. Wild & Scenic on Tour is taking place in cities across the country including Chicago, Houston, Washington DC, and many others. We are excited to bring the festival to Cincinnati to show our city’s commitment to environmental activism and love for nature.
Ohio River Foundation hopes to use the festival to provide community understanding of the connection we share with the planet and our role as stewards to keep it healthy for the next generations.
The Festival was started by the watershed advocacy group, the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) in 2003. The home festival kicks off the international tour to communities around the globe, allowing SYRCL to share their success as an environmental group with other organizations.
SPONSORSHIP
To learn more about sponsoring the 2024 Wild & Scenic Film Festival, visit our 2024 sponsorship page. Contact Bethany Miller at bmiller@ohioriverfdn.org for more information and payment options. If you’d like to submit sponsorship payment online, click here.
Wild & Scenic Film Festival 2024 Trailer
2023 Featured Films – coming soon!
I Am Salmon – Connecting humanity with salmon and the sea through the subtle art of poetry and Gyotaku (fish rubbing), Duncan Berry shares his experience as a longtime environmentalist and former captain of a salmon troller. In adopting the perspective of this transcendent fish, the beauty and power of the Oregon coast becomes the canvas through which the evolution of the salmon is illustrated.
A Flyfishing Refugee – A Polish dissident discovers the true reason rivers and salmon figure so prominently in his life.
Endangered Migration: A Monarch Butterfly Story – The annual monarch butterfly migration to Mexico is at risk, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed monarchs as an endangered species. Together, local communities and World Wildlife Fund have made significant progress toward protecting monarch butterflies’ habitat in the alpine forests that the butterflies migrate to each winter. People living in the U.S. and Canada have the opportunity to help support monarch butterflies throughout the other stages of the insects’ life cycles by preserving habitats and food sources like milkweed here in our own countries.
The Rock Pool Waltz – The Rock Pool Waltz centers around a boy’s affinity with nature which helps to ease his worries and loneliness during the COVID lockdown. This leads him to an incredible friendship with an unlikely creature from the ocean. This inspiring film brings awareness to our connection with nature and the importance of caring for our environment and the amazing creatures we share this world with.
An Alaskan Fight – Running becomes a metaphor for the conservation effort to protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay.
Iridescent – When it comes to the discovery and documentation of birds, Tim Laman is one of the best in the world. As he entered the final curation stages of his forthcoming book, Bird Planet, fellow bird lover and National Geographic photographer Keith Ladzinski reached out with an opportunity to go on safari in one of the world’s birding hotspots, Brazil’s Pantanal region. It had been on Tim’s bucket list for years, but he had yet to visit, so he jumped at the chance to photograph some of South America’s best birds.
If You Give a Beach a Bottle – Sketching the tangled web of Marine Debris on Alaska’s remote beaches.
Voices from the Water– River heroes are at the forefront of solving the pollution and waste issues faced by our planet’s waterways. “Voices of Water,” tells the stories of these champions and highlights the direct value of rivers to our community ecosystem and the importance of their role in the health of the planet and climate change. Through the stories of these heroes and the projects, they have undertaken we seek to raise awareness of river plastic pollution, and the commitment to solve the problem at its source upstream.
Black Like Plastic – Black Like Plastic highlights some of the inequities that exist in the Black community in relation to the environment. Locally produced and created, the story is shot on California’s Central Coast. Chris Ragland, founder of The Sea League, narrates the film bringing to light the connection between access, outdoor recreation, and advocacy. Featured in the film are youth, parents, and environmental advocates.
A Baffin Vacation – Erik Boomer and Sarah McNair-Landry set off on a bold multi-sport 45-day expedition traveling through the remote landscape of Baffin Island in search of stunning cliffs to climb and unexplored rivers to whitewater kayak.
The Voice of a River – Mark Dubious’ act of sacrifice for the Stanislaus River is the simplest, most effective form of activism, one rooted in love.
Thank You to our 2023 Sponsors!
THOMAS ANTHONY SULLIVAN FOUNDATION
Dan & Jill Freshley
Bill & Roseann Hayes
Law Office of Thomas Hayes
Bill & Suzanne Kite