CEC’s Santa Barbara Earth Day Green Film Festival
Films include Gaviota: The End of Southern California and Better Together
Featured as a part of the Community Environmental Council (CEC) Santa Barbara Virtual Earth Day celebration, the Green Film Festival will share a collection of over a dozen Earth-centered films from around the world during the festival, which is live online at http://sbearthday.org on 4/22, 23 & 24, as well as remaining with recorded content viewable from that site for a month, until 5/21.
The Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 sparked Earth Day, 52 years ago. Community Environmental Council will hold the 51st annual Santa Barbara Earth Day festival virtually this year. Films featured at the CEC Santa Barbara Earth Day Green Film Festival fulfill the mission to advance environmental and social justice, environmental regeneration, climate healing and community resilience. Selections feature local films as well as a collection of short films from around the world. Highlights include:
Gaviota: The End of Southern California
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf7XL4eXV2g
Produced by Tamlorn Chase and Directed by Shaw Leonard, Gaviota: The End of Southern California is a 40-minute film that explores one of the most threatened biodiversity hotspots in the world. In a monumental collaboration of artists, activists, and environmental organizations, this film documents the wildlife that thrives here like no other place in Southern California. Meticulously filmed over the course of five years, the film leads audiences from the ocean floor of the Santa Barbara Channel to the peaks of the jagged Santa Ynez Mountains. This wild journey crosses paths with breaching humpback whales, red-tailed hawks and elusive mountain lions. With nearly 90% of Southern California’s coast lost to development, the preservation of this coastline is the last bastion of hope for wildlife fighting to survive against a world closing in on them.
Better Together
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/312615053
The 1969 Union Oil blowout mobilized the Santa Barbara community to fight for the environment, inspiring the creation of many nonprofit organizations, Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency and one of the first interdisciplinary Environmental Studies programs. The legacy of the oil spill continues to inform local citizens, who have come together over the years to protect the air and water, preserve open spaces and for each other, as to when 3,000 volunteers joined the Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade to dig mud from homes after the deadly 2018 debris flow. As the world faces a global climate disruption, community resilience is more important than ever, and this one has practice.
“We all feel like we’re part of an ecosystem, that there’s an ecology of our relationships, so that what affects one person, affects us all in some way. We’re tied in an inescapable web of mutuality and interdependence.” — David Pellow, Chair, UCSB Environmental Studies Program
Better Together, narrated by Christopher Lloyd, directed by Isaac Hernandez and produced by Mercury Press International, features the following organizations: 350.org-Santa Barbara; African Women Rising; Chumash Maritime Association; Citizen’s Planning Association of Santa Barbara County; Committees for Land, Air, Water and Species; Community Environmental Council; Direct Relief; Environmental Defense Center; Food & Water Watch; Get Oil Out!; Gaviota Coast Conservancy; Habitat for Humanity of Santa Barbara County; Mission Blue; Montecito Trails Foundation; Pisces Foundation; Santa Barbara Audubon Society, Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade; Santa Barbara Channelkeeper; Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue; Santa Barbara Declaration of Environmental Rights; Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network; SB Strong; Sierra Club Santa Barbara; The Solutions Project; and UCSB Environmental Studies.
CEC’s Santa Barbara Earth Day Green Film Festival was produced by Mercury Press International.
Community Environmental Council
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www.cecsb.org
(805) 730-0768
Director of Development: Nicole Eads
Mission
At CEC, building community resilience is at the center of everything we do. Our advocacy and programs seek to address root causes of climate change.
Since 1970, CEC has led the Santa Barbara region — and at times California and the nation — in creative solutions to some of the toughest environmental problems. We are often referred to as a “think-and-do tank” — deeply analyzing a problem and then applying creative, real-world solutions to it.
CEC seeks to move the Santa Barbara region away from dependence on fossil fuels in one generation – Fossil Free by ’33. We are aggressively pursuing this goal by educating and activating the community around sustainable practices, advocating for environmentally-sound policies and laws, and building partnerships with other organizations to open new pathways for sustainable transportation, energy, and food systems. Our five initiatives – Drive Less, Drive Clean, Go Solar, Ditch Plastic, Rethink Food – offer accessible pathways for the community to connect with and take action on CEC’s vision for a cleaner, healthier future.
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Clear Thinking on Climate Change
CEC helped me understand the basics and the complexities of climate change, and how to take steps in my life to make positive changes. I also gained a deeper understanding of how to strategically bring environmental sustainability into my work to help clients be successful.
Reverse, Repair, Protect. Saving the Central Coast and Our Planet
The Community Environmental Council (CEC) must raise $15 million to fund its Protect Our Climate: Reverse, Repair, Protect campaign, the nonprofit’s ambitious plan to halt the climate crisis. As of late in 2022, CEC had raised $11.7 million, and all gifts will be matched by the John C. Mithun Foundation, up to $100,000. Funding will propel CEC’s work in several key areas, as well as establish an 8,000-square-foot Environmental Hub on Santa Barbara’s State Street – a living laboratory for people from all walks of life to design equitable climate solutions and put nature’s solutions to work.
“The Hub will fill a much-needed gap for a gathering space for the social sector, and will feature the Conklin Community Room, a flexible-use conference room. It also includes a professional webinar studio, small meeting rooms, “hot desk” rentals, and use for after-hours events such as film screenings, lectures, and receptions,” says Sigrid Wright, CEC’s CEO. “Our intention is that people from across the region who share the mission of protecting the Central Coast can have a place to design the future together.”
Key Supporters
Campaign Leadership Donors
Mary Becker
Diane Boss
James S. Bower Foundation
Sheila & Tom Cullen
Katie Davis
Emily, Dan, Casey & Willow Engel
G. A. Fowler Family Foundation
Nancy & Karl Hutterer
Karen & John Jostes
Jean Kaplan
Charles D. (Kim) Kimbell
Dorothy Largay & Wayne Rosing
John C. Mithun Foundation
Betsy & Charles Newman
Natalie Orfalea Foundation
Hutton Parker Foundation
Paul Relis
Sea Forward Fund
Judy & Jack Stapelmann
Michel Saint-Sulpice
Suzanne & John Steed
Leslie Sweem Bhutani
& Ashish Bhutani
Sally Warner-Arnett
& G. William Arnett
Elizabeth Weber
Zegar Family Foundation
Anonymous