Environmental movies - Inspiring short list

A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems.

Woody Harrelson and a group of friends take a road trip on a bio-fueled bus to demonstrate ways to be environmentally responsible and visit people who live by that principle.

An average guy makes a resolution to stop using plastic bags at the grocery store. Little does he know that this simple decision will change his life completely. He comes to the conclusion that our consumptive use of plastic has finally caught up to us, and looks at what we can do about it. Today. Right now.

Filmmaker David Bond invites parents everywhere to help their kids re-connect with nature in our digital age.

Investigates the consequences of a childhood removed from nature. At a time when children play more behind screens than outside, this documentary unplugs a group of tech savvy teens and takes them on their first wilderness adventure, documenting the wonder that comes from time spent in nature and inspiring action for a sustainable future.

Follow the Manhattan-based Beavan family as they abandon their high consumption 5th Avenue lifestyle and try to live a year while making no net environmental impact.

The Clean Bin Project is about a regular couple and their quest to answer the question 'is it possible to live completely waste free?' Partners Jen and Grant go head to head in a comedic battle to see who can swear off consumerism and produce the least amount of garbage in an entire year. Their light-hearted competition is set against a compelling examination of the sobering problem of waste in our 'throw-away' society. Featuring interviews with renowned artist and TED lecturer, Chris Jordan and marine pollution expert, Captain Charles Moore, The Clean Bin Project presents the serious topic of waste reduction with optimism, humor, and inspiration for individual action.

A documentary that investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.

Follow National Geographic photographer James Balog across the Arctic as he deploys time-lapse cameras designed for one purpose: to capture a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers.

For most of the world, consumption has been the unquestioned duty of every individual. Then garbage activist Annie Leonard brought her two-hour lecture to Free Range who helped her turn it into a 20-minute animated revolution. Shown in thousands of classrooms, endlessly blasted by Fox News, viewed more than 10 million times, The Store of Stuff finally opens the door to a serious cultural dialog about the costs of consumption.

Voices of the Transition is an enthusiastic documentary on farmers- and community-led responses to food insecurity in a scenario of climate change and peak oil. How to create local resilience? How to create a production system that enhances life? What role could the trees play? Different 'voices from the Transition', from Cuba, France and the UK, tell us of a future society where our deserts will once again be living soil, where fields will be introduced into our cities, and where independence from oil will help us to live a richer, more fulfilling life.

Aldo Leopold is considered the most important conservationist of the twentieth-century. He is the father of the national wilderness system, wildlife management and ecological restoration. His classic book A Sand County Almanac inspires us to see the natural world as a community to which we belong. Green Fire explores Leopold's personal journey of observation and understanding and reveals how his ideas resonate today with people across the entire American landscape, from inner cities to the remotest wildlands. The film challenges viewers to contemplate their own relationship with the land community.

Through interviews and reenactments, The Natural History of the Chicken investigates the role of the chicken in American life and tells several remarkable stories. A Maine farmer says she found a chicken frozen stiff, but was able to resuscitate it. Colorado natives tell a story of the chicken who lost its head-- and went on living. A Virginia farmer tells about (and demonstrates) the benefits of raising chickens for his own consumption. Perhaps most surprising is the case of the Florida woman: she bathes her pet bird, and takes it both swimming and shopping. Through these and other stories, this documentary illuminates the role that chickens play in (some of) our lives.

The origins of the Transition movement with founder Rob Hopkins, interviewed in one of the original Transition Towns, Totnes, England.

The story of a shepherd's single handed quest to re-forest a barren valley.

Taking Root tells the dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights, and defend democracy--a movement for which this charismatic woman became an iconic inspiration.

The documentary, "The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil," was inspired when Faith Morgan and Pat Murphy took a trip to Cuba through Global Exchange in August, 2003. That year Pat had begun studying and speaking about worldwide peak oil production. In May Pat and Faith attended the second meeting of The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, a European group of oil geologists and scientists, which predicted that mankind was perilously close to having used up half of the world's oil resources. When they learned that Cuba underwent the loss of over half of its oil imports and survived, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the couple wanted to see for themselves how Cuba had done this. During their first trip to Cuba, in the summer of 2003, they traveled from Havana to Trinidad and through several other towns on their way back to Havana. They found what Cubans call "The Special Period" astounding and Cuban's responses very moving. Faith found herself wanting to document on film Cuba's successes so that what they had done wouldn't be lost. Both of them wanted to learn more about Cuba's transition from large farms or plantations and reliance on fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, to small organic farms and urban gardens. Cuba was undergoing a transition from a highly industrial society to a sustainable one. Cuba became, for them, a living example of how a country can successfully traverse what we all will have to deal with sooner or later, the reduction and loss of finite fossil fuel resources. In the fall of 2003 Pat and Faith had the opportunity to return to Cuba to study its agriculture. It was a wonderful trip. They saw much of the island, met many farmers and urban gardeners, scientists and engineers - traveling more than 1700 miles, from one end of Cuba to the other. It was all they had hoped for and more. In 2004 Community Service, Inc. (CSI) began raising money and organizing a third trip (October), to film in Cuba. Greg Green, cinematographer and director of The End of Suburbia documentary, was the chief videographer. Faith Morgan shot the second camera, John Morgan did still photography and Megan Quinn, Outreach Director of CSI, was sound director. After their return from Cuba, they secured assistance and direction from Tom Blessing IV, producer, and Eric Johnson, post-production supervisor and editor. Together, they bring over 40 years combined experience in film and television production. The goals of this film are to give hope to the developed world as it wakes up to the consequences of being hooked on oil, and to lift American's prejudice of Cuba by showing the Cuban people as they are. The filmmakers do this by having the people tell their story on film. It's a story of their dedication to independence and triumph over adversity, and a story of cooperation and hope. Several Cubans expressed the belief that living on an island, with its natural boundaries, breeds awareness that there are limits to natural resources. Everyone who has worked on the documentary hopes that, seeing this film, people will also see the world on which we live, as another, much larger, island.

For decades the San Francisco Bay Area has been a hub for the recycling movement. Even the garbage companies have a long history of recycling practices. After the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, community, non-profit recycling centers began to pop up in schools, garages, and neighborhood centers all sharing the goal of bringing recycling to their cities. Now in 2006, only two non-profit recycling organizations remain in San Francisco. Despite the lack of surviving community recycling centers, the Bay Area is still home to a unique community of recyclers who push the envelope of possibilities. Featuring interviews with recycling pioneers and music by Rube Waddell, "The Recyclergy" is an entertaining examination of a fading subculture.

With aerial footage from fifty-four countries, 'Home' is a depiction of how Earth's problems are all interlinked.

Examines the role of the bottled water industry and its effects on our health, climate change, pollution, and our reliance on oil.

The only remedy for disconnecting people from the natural world is connecting them to it again.

Two young men decide to spend an archive circle Norwegian winter in the isolated and uninhabited bay of Norway. Their home is built from salvaged material washed up onshore. They surf every day with much time for self reflection.

This powerful film odyssey across America explores the sea change in our national attitude from pride in big dams as engineering wonders to the growing awareness that our own future is bound to the life and health of our rivers.

Once upon a time, in almost every industrial city, countless rivers flowed. We built houses along their banks. Our roads hugged their curves. And their currents fed our mills and factories. But as cities grew, we polluted rivers so much that they became conduits for deadly waterborne diseases like cholera, which was 19th century's version of the Black Plague. Our solution two centuries ago was to bury rivers underground and merge them with sewer networks. Today, under the city, they still flow, out of sight and out of mind... until now. That's because urban dwellers are on a quest to reconnect with this denigrated natural world. LOST RIVERS takes us on an adventure down below and across the globe, retracing the history of these lost urban rivers by plunging into archival maps and going underground with clandestine urban explorers. We search for the disappeared Petite rivière St-Pierre in Montreal, the Garrison Creek in Toronto, the River Tyburn in London, the Saw Mill River in New York, and the Bova-Celato River in Bresica, Italy. Could we see these rivers again? To find the answer, we meet visionary urban thinkers, activists and artists from around the world.

Deep in the darkest battery hen cage, a chicken secretly pens a short film screenplay on an egg. That egg was fortuitously discovered in an egg carton by a couple of hungry film makers.