Durango Independent Film Festival 2009

In a bright yellow room in an outpatient clinic for the mentally ill, Melissa Johnson uses art to educate and empower her clients. But behind her accomplished appearance the difficulties of her own life emerge.

Like many guys, Mark Foster struggles with commitment. But given his past, he has good reason. Fifteen years ago, his parents’ scandalous divorce grabbed the public’s attention and shattered Mark’s ideas about marriage. Even worse, Mark and his charismatic brother, Hal, were forced to pick sides, and to this day disagree over whom to fault. Unfortunately, Mark has never shared any of this with his unsuspecting girlfriend, Erika, who is about to meet Mark’s embittered, camera-happy mother, Gretchen, for the first time. As Mark desperately struggles to keep his family’s sordid history under wraps during a long, awkward weekend, past issues resurface that force Mark to confront the thing he fears the most – his own lies.

The Brooks Range is one of the wildest places in North America and stands in many people’s eyes as the postcard image of wilderness. This film explores ideas of wilderness through the stunning landscapes of Gates of the Arctic National Park, and the people who have witnessed them throughout history. The film intertwines stories from Nunamiut Eskimo culture, a local subsistence hunter and trapper, and Bob Marshall and Mardy Murie, passionate conservationists who were inspired by these hills to start a national wilderness-protection movement. The film is a visually breathtaking portrait of a remote land, its people and its wildlife.

In 2007, Invisible Children posed a challenge to youth around the world: raise $1 million in 100 days to rebuild schools in war-torn northern Uganda. Thousands of students rallied, and 20 were rewarded with a trip of a lifetime. A trip into Africa’s longest-running war would change everything they knew about the world. It doesn’t matter where you come from. It’s where you go.

In the town of Julia, the residents of the black neighborhood of Gospel Hill are being forced out of their homes to make way for a multimillion dollar golf course. Race relations are strained just as they were 30 years ago when Peter Malcolm, a black civil rights activist, was assassinated. Dr. Ron Palmer, an influential black community leader who runs the emergency clinic in Gospel Hill, is supporting the golf course development and helping to push the people off their land. The son of the late civil-rights leader's life begins to intertwine with Dr. Palmer's as the real estate deal pushes forward.

Experts say we are living at the end of the period of the greatest material abundance in human history. Cheap and abundant energy from fossil fuels has driven technological invention, causing increases in total and per-capita resource extraction and consumption, threatening our 200-year-old fossil-fuel economy. We are adding 80 million people to the world population each year, and optimistic U.N. projections suggest by 2050, humanity will demand food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel at double the rate at which the earth can generate them.

Her name is Green, she is alone in a world that doesn't belong to her. She is a female orangutan, victim of deforestation and resource exploitation by humans. This beautifully artistic and powerful film is an emotional journey with Green's final days and a visual ride presenting the devastating impact on wildlife and indigenous poeples, logging and land clearing for palm oil plantations, choking haze created by rainforest fires and the tragic end of rainforest biodiversity. As her life slowly ends, we watch the effects of man's indifference to these beautiful animals and the loss of the world's rainforest treasure.

This is the story of Durango’s own Turtle Lake Refuge, which promotes personal health, and the value of wild foods and wild lands. We learn the history from founder and Durango native Katrina Blair, refuge staff and many community members.