A need to see

Local film fest aims to change the way we think about nature

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The Boulder Valley is no stranger to advocacy groups, especially of the environmental variety. With the abundance of voices here, Boulder residents can be flooded with so much information that local organizations often have to find creative ways to get their message out.

 

For local environmental group Boulder Rights of Nature (BRON), that creative method is the upcoming BRON Film Festival, which runs this weekend from November 5-8 at the Dairy Center for the Arts. In its second year, the festival will screen nine films that feature a range of topics from permaculture to histories of environmental activism and social conflict among elephants.

All films featured at the festival have a connection with the Boulder community, whether the films were directed by Boulder locals or the content directly pertains to the Boulder area. However, the most significant element these films have in common is the emphasis BRON’s central message of changing the ways in which humans interact with and relate to nature — a crucial change needed no matter where you are in the world, says Hailey Hawkins, a BRON activist who serves on the Film Festival committee.

“The importance of the films that we choose to show is that we can experience nature and see beauty in nature, whether or not that is in a far-off location,” Hawkins says.

Hawkins, who works with BRON as part of her Master’s program at Naropa University, believes that film is a powerful way to raise environmental consciousness and successfully portray BRON’s message to the Boulder community by connecting on a personal level with an audience.

“Film is art, and art is so motivating,” she says. “Often you can look at something like a painting and get so much more out of it than you would in a lecture.”

BRON aims to draw people into unique presentations of nature that will elicit an emotional response, rather than purely provide information and promote an agenda.

“The films that we chose, we chose them specifically because they aren’t ‘talking head films,’” she says.

“These films are cinematic experiences — they are very beautiful and very compelling.”

Through initiatives like the film festival, BRON focuses on the individual element of environmental activism and the belief that a personal shift in the way one thinks about nature can have large impacts. Above all, BRON seeks to eradicate what it believes is a false dichotomy between nature and human beings that ultimately results in a damaged environment. “We try to pretend that we aren’t nature, but the truth is that we are so interconnected and so reliant,” Hawkins says.

While promoting a radical shift in consciousness, BRON aims to enact concrete change primarily by influencing government policy. As Boulder’s representative of the Rights of Nature movement, BRON seeks to establish the right of nature to exist as an independent entity and legally protect humans from interfering with that right, just as humans in the United States enjoy the protection of the law.

Following after cities like Santa Monica and Pittsburgh, which have both legally recognized the rights of nature, BRON lobbied to get the verbiage into Boulder County law in 2013, although the initiative failed. However, Hawkins believes that BRON’s work is far from over.

“Now is really the time to embrace and find solutions,” she says.

In BRON’s vision of the future, property owners would be prohibited from damaging ecosystems that may be dependent on that property, and cities would legally recognize the rights of nature over short-term economic gain. While this vision may be interpreted as damaging to the economy, Hawkins disagrees with the notion that environmental protection and business exist independent of each other. She argues that businesses should “maybe put economic gain aside because, in reality, environmental gain is economic gain in the long term.”

Hawkins cites investment in renewable energy technologies as an important step for a system with legitimate protection of nature, but she cautions that such initiatives will likely never solve the environmental crisis of our day and age.

“Sustainability is a word that is so overused” she says. “It´s becoming diluted, and rights of nature can help establish real sustainability.”

Just as the festival will screen films featuring phenomena across the world, BRON’s call for communion in nature knows no boundaries. For Hawkins, the global call for action is necessary given the sheer scope of BRON’s goals.

“All of these things are so interconnected,” she says. “[BRON’s message] is about the global environment — nothing is isolated.”

While the Rights of Nature movement is centered on the protection of nature, Hawkins believes it would be short-sighted to ignore human dependence on nature — and human dependence on other humans.

“We need to be bringing [nature and human beings] all together and thinking about it as one big thing, with people part of that,” Hawkins says. “We shouldn’t treat people unfairly. We shouldn’t exploit people. We should be just and fair.”

Running from this Thursday through Sunday, the BRON Film Festival will also feature workshops on a variety of subjects from honeybee conservation and prairie dogs, as well as a performance by Native American grass dancers.

If seeing is believing, the BRON Film Festival is set to enjoy the acclaim of its first year and continue to engage the Boulder community in a conversation that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

ON THE BILL: Boulder Rights of Nature Film Festival. 6 p.m. Thursday- Sunday, Nov. 5-8, Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, 303-440- 7826. Tickets run $12 for one day or $30 for all four days.