“Children of the Amazon follows Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol as she travels a modern highway deep into the Amazon in search of the Indigenous Surui and Negarote children she photographed fifteen years ago. Part road movie, part time travel, her journey tells the story of what happened to life in the largest forest on Earth when a road was built straight through its heart.”
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From her childhood bedroom in the Chicago suburbs, an American teenage girl uses social media to coordinate the revolution in Syria. Armed with Facebook, Twitter, Skype and camera phones, she helps her social network “on the ground” in Syria brave snipers and shelling in the streets to show the world the human rights atrocities of a dictator. But just because the world can see the violence doesn‚t mean the world can help. As the revolution rages on, everyone in the network must decide what is the most effective way to fight a dictator: social media or AK-47s.
Participant at FiRe 2014: Writer, Director, and Producer Joe Piscatella
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This powerful film odyssey across America explores the sea change in our national attitude from pride in big dams as engineering wonders to the growing awareness that our own future is bound to the life and health of our rivers. Dam removal has moved beyond the fictional Monkey Wrench Gang to go mainstream. Where obsolete dams come down, rivers bound back to life, giving salmon and other wild fish the right of return to primeval spawning grounds, after decades without access. DamNation’™s majestic cinematography and unexpected discoveries move through rivers and landscapes altered by dams, but also through a metamorphosis in values, from conquest of the natural world to knowing ourselves as part of nature.
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GMO OMG director and concerned father Jeremy Seifert is in search of answers. How do GMOs affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice? And perhaps the ultimate question, which Seifert tests himself: is it even possible to reject the food system currently in place, or have we lost something we can’t gain back? These and other questions take Seifert on a journey from his family’s table to Haiti, Paris, Norway, and the lobby of agra-giant Monsanto, from which he is unceremoniously ejected. Along the way we gain insight into a question that is of growing concern to citizens the world over: what’s on your plate?
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Ground Operations is a documentary film and social action campaign that champions the growing network of combat veterans who are transitioning into careers as sustainable farmers, ranchers and artisan food producers. Let’s help them get started and build their resources, so that veterans can create healthy new lives for themselves and delicious food security for communities across America. Ground Operations screening events feature farm-fresh food, the film, farmer-veteran speakers and a robust conversation about local food and farming.
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Just before Thanksgiving 2013, Mick Ebeling returned home from Sudan’s Nuba Mountains where he
set up what is probably the world’s first 3D-printing prosthetic lab and training facility. More to
the point of the journey is that Mick managed to give hope and independence back to a kid who, at
age 14, had both his arms blown off and considered his life not worth living.
Just prior to the trip, the now 16-year-old Daniel was located in a 70,000 person refugee camp in
Yida, and, on 11/11/13, he received version 1 of his left arm. The Daniel Hand enabled him to feed
himself for the first time in two years. He ate chocolate for the first time.
Participant at FiRe 2014: CEO & Founder, Not Impossible Labs, Mick Ebeling
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A courageous young woman takes the boldest step imaginable to confront her risk of having inherited the fatal, incurable Huntington’s Disease. A short (15-minute) documentary.
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There is a hidden epidemic – millions of people living with perplexing illnesses that elude definition and treatment. Undiagnosed: Medical Refugees is a documentary about what it is like to exist in a constant state of unknown, struggling with undiagnosed illnesses and rare diseases, and existing as medical refugees in a modern health care system. The film aspires to bring objectivity to this controversial and timely subject by interviewing doctors, medical administrators, and people, both children and adults, who have the misfortune of suffering without a diagnosis. Research and professional opinions combine with gripping stories into an incredible narrative that showcases the strength of the human spirit and the need for change in our medical system.
Participant at FiRe 2014: Creator and Co-director Dr. Katia Moritz
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The promise of jobs from a proposed uranium mill has an economically devastated mining community in Colorado hopeful for the first time in decades. When environmentalists step in to stop the mill, pro-mill advocates are enraged. A debate ensues, pitting jobs against health and the environment.
Without judgment, both sides of the issue are brought to life in heart-wrenching detail as the film follows conflicting opinions and visions for the future. The film offers no easy answers but aims instead to capture personal stories and paint a portrait of the lives behind this nuanced and complex issue
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Worlds apart, a 5-star chef, a 12-year-old girl, and a retired school teacher discover how their individual efforts to feed the poor ignite a movement in the fight against hunger. Award-winning chef Narayanan Krishnan, fighting against the caste system in India, quits his job to begin a life of cooking and hand-delivering fresh meals to hundreds of people in his hometown. Katie Stagliano’s planting of a single cabbage seedling when she was 9 years old blossoms into Katie’s Krops, a nonprofit with 73 gardens dedicated to ending hunger. Retired middle-school teacher Mr. Law battles personal health issues as he hand delivers more than a thousand sandwiches nightly to the hungry in Minneapolis. This documentary tells the tale of these remarkable individuals and the unexpected challenges they face. Despite being constantly reminded that hunger is far too big a problem for one person to solve, they persevere and see their impact ripple further than their individual actions.
Website:
http://www.thestarfishthrowers.com/throw-starfish/
To lend support:
Katie’s Krops
Akshaya Trust (Narayanan Krishnan)
Allan Law (MRD)
