Wild & Scenic Film Festival (POSTPONED)

About the Film Festival

Considered one of the nation’s premier environmental and adventure film festivals, Wild & Scenic features award-winning short films about nature, community activism, adventure, conservation, water, energy and climate change, wildlife, environmental justice, agriculture, Native American and indigenous cultures.

The Films

Our festival will include some of the very best and highly acclaimed films that are part of the Wild & Scenic film festival. Our film selections focus on themes related to POST and Midpen’s work on public access, sustainable agriculture, as well as protection of natural resources such as forests, wildlife, and water resources.

Where the Wild Things Keep Playing

An ode to the athlete who relishes in getting dirty, who chuckles after a long day in the mountains, effortlessly glides through the crystal clear waves and most importantly, is unapologetic in pursuing their love of getting rowdy in adventures. Director Krystle Wright brings this next installment since the wild things never stopped playing.

Blooming Culture

Fourth-grade students from Palouse Prairie Charter School (PPCS) in Idaho share their experience building Blooming Culture, a canoe that combines European and Indigenous styles. Students and traditional canoe families paddle together to acknowledge the colonization of indigenous peoples and celebrate our hopes for a continued confluence of cultures. Avery Caudill is a PPCS graduate and made this film in his transition from high school to college.

Fighting Fire with Fire

In an effort to restore the role of Native people as land stewards and mitigate the threat of wildfires, UC-Davis professor Beth Rose Middleton Manning fires up a hands-on lesson in cultural burning. Tribal Chairman Ron Goode leads students in an immersive experience preparing the land, igniting the fire, and carrying out indigenous traditions that have restored California landscapes for centuries.

Raccoon and the Light

A raccoon finds a flashlight in the woods!

Detroit Hives

East Detroit urban beekeepers Tim Paule and Nicole Lindsey are a young couple working to bring diversity to the field of beekeeping and create opportunities for young Detroit natives to overcome adversity. Detroit ranks fourth in the United States for the most vacant housing lots with well over 90,000 empty lots to date. In an effort to address this issue, Detroit Hives has been purchasing vacant lots and converting them into buzzing bee farms. ‘Detroit Hives’ explores the importance of bringing diversity to beekeeping and rebuilding inner-city communities one hive at a time.

Love, Trails & Dinosaurs

This heartwarming film tells the story of the first person with autism to hike every trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Garan Moore. His mother, Theresa, shares their story of a journey for weight loss that developed into a passion for hiking – and 900 miles later…one historic achievement.

A Walk Through the Land of A Thousand Hills

Claver Ntoyinkima, a native park ranger, shares the secrets of Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda as he guides us through the forest. With almost 300 bird species, over 1,000 plant species, and dozens of large and small mammals, Nyungwe is one of the most biodiverse places in the world. Twenty-five years after the devastation of the Rwandan Civil War, the park is now one of the best-conserved montane rainforests in Central Africa. As Claver walks through the forest we uncover the origins of his conservation values and the history of an ecosystem that survived one of Rwanda’s darkest periods.

Nature Now

Made with no flights, recycled footage, and zero net carbon. Given away for free. Viewed 53 million times, played to the United Nations. This film is a personal and passionate call to arms from Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot to use nature to heal our broken climate.

This Land

Runner and advocate Faith E. Briggs used to run through the streets of Brooklyn every morning. Now she’s running 150 miles through three National Monuments that lie in the thick of the controversy around United States public lands.

Brotherhood of Skiing

Since 1973, the National Brotherhood of Skiers has overcome barriers by bringing soul and smiles to the mountain. Formed during the height of the black power movement, the organization is dedicated to creating a welcoming space for people of color on the slopes and supporting black youth in snowsports

The New Environmentalists: Sacred Ocean

A crucial coalition comes together to protect the tiny but precious Cook Islands, going beyond citizen activism to cultivate robust legal standards for the protection of their native islands.

Every Nine Minutes

Every nine minutes, the weight of a blue whale (300,000 pounds) in plastic makes its way into our ocean. To call attention to this, the Monterey Bay Aquarium built a life-sized replica of a blue whale made of single-use, locally sourced plastic trash. Certified by Guinness World Records, the whale is the largest sculpture of its kind ever built.

Blind Sushi

The film tells the story of a blind travel writer who goes foraging and diving with the world’s first sustainable sushi chef, in search of enlightenment and a new way to see the world.