The seventh annual
Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY), a student-run event being held April 3 to 11, has selected 26 films from hundreds of submissions representing more than 30 countries.
The festival lineup, which was announced today, includes “The Chinese Mayor,” a Sundance Film Festival award-winning film that provides an intimate glimpse of one official’s attempt to transform a polluted city in the face of a national system that makes it difficult to do so; “Monsoon,” an incomparable examination of the effects of the monsoon season in India which won the Audience Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival; and the U.S. premiere of “Umi Yama Aida,” an evocative film that illustrates the link between nature and humanity in Japanese culture.
This year, the festival has added a symposium where filmmakers, students, and faculty are invited to explore the intersection of academia and film. These workshops, held on Friday, April 3 in Kroon Hall will feature an introduction to the basics of filmmaking by Peabody Award-winning documentarian
Ian Cheney and an examination of effective environmental storytelling by Emmy Award-winning executive producer
Paul Lussier. The workshop will conclude with a lessons-learned presentation by
David Gelber, executive producer of the Showtime television series “Years of Living Dangerously.” EFFY is also screening one of its favorite films from the 2014 festival, the Oscar-nominated animated short “The Dam Keeper,” for New Haven school students.
All events will be held at venues across Yale University and are free and open to the public.