Sustainability on the big screen

This month, the University’s Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) is proudly supporting the second annual Transitions Film Festival – Australia’s largest solutions-focused sustainability film festival. 

The Festival will include films and discussions covering a broad range of key themes including international energy futures, eco-architecture, innovative design, transport, food security, sustainable economics and global community.

Professor John Wiseman from MSSI says that the Festival aims to be an interactive event, inspiring public discussion through film.

Professor Wiseman and Drew Hutton from ‘Lock the Gate Alliance’ which raises awareness about coal seam gas mining will be hosting the opening night screening of Matt’s Damon’s Promised Land – a new feature narrative about fracking, directed by Gus Van Sant.

“We hope to inspire the audience to discuss ideas in the film by encouraging them to imagine pathways to a just and resilient post-carbon future,” Professor Wiseman says. “We’ll also be drawing links with ideas about transition strategies explored through the Post-Carbon Pathways research project and website.”

The Transitions Film Festival’s Director Timothy Parish says his team has spent 12 months scouring the globe for the most inspirational cutting-edge sustainability documentaries.

“The Transitions Film Festival is a visionary program showcasing ground-breaking films that are positive, solutions-focused and inspirational,” Mr Parish says.

“We have an amazing line-up including The Sundance Institute’s A Fierce Green Fire introduced by former leader of the Greens Party, Bob Brown, and the highly anticipated Chasing Ice, introduced by Anna Rose, founder of the Australia Youth Climate Coalition who has just returned from a fact-finding trip to Antarctica.

“The visionary thinking shared through these stories help us to gain a much greater perspective of the age of transformation we are living through. The global shifts we are experiencing in energy, technology and economics are not things to be feared, but can be catalysts for a larger transition to a more sustainable and equitable future for all.”

As Festival patron Anna Rose says, transition has many elements: from fossil fuels to renewable energy; from greed to empathy and compassion; from short-term thinking to long-term planning; from shopping as life to collaborative consumption.

“Powerful stories, told through film, can change hearts and minds in a deeper and more long-lasting way than any set of statistics, no matter how shocking,” Ms Rose says.

The festival runs 15-23 February at Federation Square, ACMI and Cinema Nova. It showcases six national premieres, 15 feature films and runs in association with the Sustainable Living Festival, Australia’s largest sustainability festival. 

www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/content/pages/post-carbon-pathways

www.transitionsfilmfestival.com/