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The Office of Sustainability hosts films on campus with various collaborators. These documentaries cover a variety of sustainability-related issues facing our world and are often followed by a time for questions and answers with panelists from Auburn University. If you would like to attend a future film, please visit our calendar for upcoming opportunities.

A woman walking through the grass

FASHION REIMAGINED

  • Screened on Campus: November 2024
  • Released: 2023
  • Amy Powney, a celebrated designer behind the Mother of Pearl brand, is gaining prominence in London’s fashion world. Growing up off-the-grid in rural England with activist parents, she has always been aware of the fashion industry’s environmental toll. After winning the Vogue award for Best Young Designer of the Year and its accompanying cash prize, Amy chooses to invest in developing a fully sustainable collection, revolutionizing her brand from production to final product. Her three-year journey not only reshapes her business but also sparks broader societal change.
Dirt! THE MOVIE

DIRT! FILM FESTIVAL

  • Screened on Campus: March 2024
  • Released: 2009
  • DIRT! The Movie–narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis–brings to life the environmental, economic, social and political impact that the soil has. It shares the stories of experts from all over the world who study and are able to harness the beauty and power of a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with soil. But more than the film and the lessons that it teaches, DIRT! The Movie is a call to action. “When humans arrived 2 million years ago, everything changed for dirt. And from that moment on, the fate of dirt and humans has been intimately linked.”
A Native American woman and a Native American young girl pick yellow flowers

GATHER FILM FESTIVAL

  • Screened on Campus: October 2023
  • Released: 2020
  • Gather is an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political, and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.
Oscillation Transia Film Festival - Surf Girls Jamaica

OSCILLATION TRANSIA FILM FESTIVAL

  • Screened on Campus: February 2022
  • Campus Partners: Diversity in Honors
  • Released: Archive Selections for 2022 Screening

The theme for this film collection was diverse voices connecting humans to the natural world. It included films from all over the world depicting how people from many backgrounds and cultures can find peace in nature and how some are fighting to protect their environments.

Southern Exposure Film Festival - A river

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE FILMS

  • Screened on Campus: October 2021
  • Partner: Alabama Rivers Alliance
  • Released: 2021

Southern Exposure is a film fellowship program that actively raises awareness and appreciation for Alabama’s natural beauty. The fellowship brings emerging filmmakers from across the country together to tell stories depicting the triumphs and challenges facing the state of Alabama.

Oscillation Transia film flyer

OSCILLATION TRANSIA FILM FESTIVAL

  • Screened on Campus: October 2020
  • Campus Partners: Auburn Outdoors, the Lee County Flannel Club
  • Released: Archive Selections for 2020 Screening

Combining the love for nature and outdoor cinema, Oscillation Transia screens works in outdoor and rural areas around the world featuring films that explore both fictional and non-fictional themes of movement, nomadic living, adventure, and human connection to the natural world.

PARIS-TO-PITTSBURGH-_-Poster

PARIS TO PITTSBURGH

  • Screened on Campus: November 2019
  • Campus Partners: The Department of Geosciences, Student Organizations: Marine Biology Club, EarthStrike at Auburn, Environmental Action Committee
  • Released: 2018

From coastal cities to America’s heartland, Paris to Pittsburgh celebrates how Americans are demanding and developing real solutions in the face of climate change. And as the weather grows more deadly and destructive, they aren’t waiting on Washington to act.

Trashed movie -Cover

TRASHED

  • Screened on Campus: October 2018
  • Campus Partners: The Waste Reduction and Recycling Department and Tiger Dining
  • Released: 2012

Trashed – No Place For Waste looks at the risks to the food chain, the environment, and our health through pollution of our air, land and sea by waste. It is a global conversation between Jeremy Irons and scientists, politicians and ordinary individuals. Visually and emotionally the film is both horrific and beautiful, but ends by showing how the risks can easily be averted through sustainable approaches that provide far more employment than the current ‘waste industry’.

Chasing-Coral-Cover

CHASING CORAL

  • Screened on Campus: November 2017
  • Campus Partners: Marine Biology Club
  • Released: 2017

Beneath the waves, coral reefs are dying on a massive scale. These scientists and filmmakers fight to stop it.

Before-The-Flood-Cover

BEFORE THE FLOOD

  • Screened on Campus: November 2016
  • Campus Partners: Environmental Awareness Organization
  • Released: 2016

Before The Flood focuses on the important topic of how we can all help combat climate change. The movie looks closely at issues including fossil fuels, methane gas, palm oil, the geopolitical landscape, and the US political landscape.

Chasing-Ice-Cover

CHASING ICE

  • Screened on Campus: November 2015
  • Campus Partners: Department of Geology and Geography, COSAM
  • Released: 2012

Acclaimed environmental photographer James Balog uses his Extreme Ice Survey to present undeniable evidence of our changing planet. In Chasing Ice, Balog deploys revolutionary time-lapse cameras to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds to capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Traveling with a team of young adventurers across the brutal Arctic, Balog risks his career and his wellness in pursuit of the biggest story facing humanity.

Merchants-of-Doube-Cover

MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

  • Screened on Campus: November 2015
  • Campus Partners: Environmental Awareness Organization
  • Released: 2014

Based on Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, a 2010 non-fiction book by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, this documentary identifies parallels between the global warming controversy and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer. Oreskes and Conway write that in each case “keeping the controversy alive” by spreading doubt and confusion after a scientific consensus had been reached was the basic strategy of those opposing action.

Who-Owns-Water

WHO OWNS WATER

  • Screened: October 2014
  • Campus Partners: School of Communication and Journalism’s Media Studies Program and Auburn For Water
  • Released: 2014

Three states–Alabama, Georgia, and Florida–are battling over the diminishing water of the Chattahoochee River. In this stunningly-shot, award-winning documentary film, Michael and David Hanson paddle the river from the Appalachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico meeting people and listening to their water-level perspective. All along their 542-mile journey, the brothers seek to answer the question, Who Owns Water?

Thin-Ice-Cover

THIN ICE

  • Screened on Campus: April 2013
  • Released: 2013

In recent years climate science has come under increasing attack, so geologist Simon Lamb took his camera to find out what is really going on from his climate science colleagues. Simon followed scientists at work in the Arctic, Antarctic, Southern Ocean, New Zealand, Europe and the USA. They talk about their work, and their hopes and fears, with rare candor and directness. This creates an intimate portrait of the global community of researchers racing to understand our planet’s changing climate.

Terra-Blight-Cover

TERRABLIGHT

  • Screened on Campus: September 2012
  • Campus Partners: The Waste Reduction and Recycling Department
  • Released: 2012

Terra Blight is a feature-length documentary that explores America’s consumption of computers and the hazardous waste we create in pursuit of the latest technology.