January 13, 2020 – This year’s Wild & Scenic Film Festival (January 16-20 Nevada City and Grass Valley, CA) includes a sprinkling of local films—films with local topics and or local filmmakers. It sounds cliche, but for me, at this moment, it seems essential to think global and act local. With climate and environmental laws being consistently reversed and or softened, it is a time when our local communities are more important than ever. Taking action where we can is where we can consistently make a difference.

Each film with local connections demonstrates ways that individuals are exploring solutions, have gone deeper or are sharing something in their personal world. The topics range from saving a wild river, exploring a developed river, learning to live in community and managing the inevitable wildfire dance that has become so much a part of our lives with a broad swatch of cross-sections to agriculture.

Local/Regional Films at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival:

A Bird in the Hand describes a bird tagging project, done as a collaboration with schools, volunteers and California State Parks. It examines how citizens can learn and through learning change their relationship to nature. Not only a wonderful glimpse into a bird’s life, but a potential model for other such collaborative efforts. Partners include Gold Country Avian Studies, Bear Yuba Land Trust and Empire Mine State Historic Park.

A Bird in the Hand | Sarinah Simons, Allison Paules Nelson | 5 min

A Stones Throw Away is a 9-minute look athow a small farm just outside of Colfax is finding a way to thrive by creating a coliving environment for farmers, where they can work and live. This local film touches on ways that quality of life can be impacted by living in community. Community provides a great quality of life, with no commute to work, a closeness to the land and a spirit of community that is rare. For the rest of us, it also provides a pathway to economic success for organic growers, which means more availability of high quality locally-sourced food.

A Stones Throw Away | Maxwell Wolff, Jake Smothers, Evan Patrick, Jordan Hill | 9 min.

Not If But When: Wildfire Solutions is a 39-minute documentary that focuses on solutions to our current wildfire predicament. In doing so, local projects including a rurally-based biomass plant, the historic use of controlled burns and forest management development techniques in the Sagehen Creek Field Station are examined. The outcomes for our region are potentially very significant with fire reduction programs reaching from Truckee to Yuba County and the forest surrounding Bullard’s Bar. This is information that is valuable from the point of view of community awareness, but also in terms of impacts to ongoing forestry management and future wildfire control.

Not If But When Wildfire Solutions | Radu Sava, Rebekah Hood-Sava | 39 min.

The Best of Both Worlds -Cohousing’s Promise is a 27 -minute introduction to cohousing, featuring interviews with cohousing residents in Nevada City, Grass Valley, Davis, and Fair Oaks, California. Cohousing is a living arrangement providing both privacy and community—individual homes exist within a planned community with many shared common areas, such as a garden, dining area, workshop, and pool. Not only does cohousing provide a more sustainable model for living, it is also providing a 21st century village for raising children and allowing seniors to age in place. (Disclaimer: this writer worked on this film).

The Best of Both Worlds – Cohousing’s Promise | John de Graaf, Doug Stanley, Greg Davis | 27 min.

The Sacramento – At Current Speed takes a 300 mile paddle down the Sacramento River from Redding to Sacramento at the pace of the river. This explores both the interface between the Sacramento River, nature and commercial agriculture. Compelling in showing our dependency on water and how resource management can both coexist with nature and also disrupt the environment. This 38 -minute film includes an interview with former Secretary of California Natural Resources Agency, John Laird.

The Sacramento – At Current Speed | Tom Bartels, Round House Productions, Mitch Dion | 38 min.

Whitewater in Peril is a quick look at a highly endangered section of the Bear River. The footage in this film provides a beautiful glimpse into water hidden by roadways and brings to light amazing rapids which are critically threatened now by NID’s proposed Centennial Dam.

Whitewater in Peril | Jeff Litton | 3 min.

Four of these local/regional films are in a single session on Saturday Afternoon January 18, at the Nevada Theatre Nevada City https://sched.co/YQtm

and also Sunday Morning January 19, Gold Miners Inn, Grass Valley https://sched.co/YQut

Not if But When Wildfire Solutions Nevada City Vet’s Hall screening is Friday January 17, 2020 8:00 pm – 10:15 pm and is followed by a 30–minute panel discussion including those in the film and scientists. Learn more https://sched.co/YQvi

Not if But When Wildfire Solutions also screens on Sunday January 19 at 1:30 pm, Gold Miners Inn, Grass Valley, California.