Organizers hope ‘Wild & Scenic’ film showing will inspire local documentaries

The film documentary on White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Ga., is titled “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts.”

That’s because fifth-generation family farm owner Will Harris once was talking about White Oak’s evolution from industrial to sustainable agriculture, and when he got to the number of livestock dependent on his land and stewardship, he figured White Oak at any given time had 100,000 beating hearts in its flocks and herds.

The film will be shown Thursday night during a roadshow sneak-peek “Wild & Scenic Film Festival” hosted by Trees Columbus at The Gallery, 1232 Broadway – on the second floor over the River & Rail restaurant – and Harris will be there to talk about it.

The admission price is $20, and seating is limited to about 75 people. Fifty already have bought tickets, available at River & Rail and at Outside World, 1025 Broadway.

The show starts at 6 p.m. The White Oak documentary only takes about 15 minutes, so Harris will take questions after that.

Then at 6:30 guests will see the 80-minute film “Can You Dig This?” It’s about the urban gardening movement in the Compton area of Los Angeles, guiding viewers through four accounts of people gardening in the city.

Thursday’s event is a lead-in to other, much larger screenings set for next year, in February and July, said Paige Martin Swift of Trees Columbus. The nonprofit hopes it will spur people here to get involved and envision environmental documentaries of their own.

These local screenings are associated with the Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, Calif., organized by the South Yuba River Citizens League, which goes by SYRCL.

Swift said it’s the largest environmental film festival in North America, drawing 6,500 to Nevada City last year. It’s next set for Jan. 11-15.

“Wild & Scenic is a call to action,” reads its online mission statement. “At the festival, filmgoers are transformed into a congregation of committed activists, dedicated to saving our increasingly threatened planet. We show environmental and adventure films that illustrate the Earth’s beauty, the challenges facing our planet and the work communities are doing to protect the environment. Through these films, Wild & Scenic both informs people about the state of the world and inspires them to take action.”

But one part of the planet often is missing in this environmental activism, Swift said: “They get very few submissions from the Southeast.” White Oak Pastures’ story would be a regional rarity there.

Now that Columbus is developing its own film industry, Trees Columbus hopes the films shown here will spur similar efforts here, Swift said.

For more information, visit www.treescolumbus.org or email Swift at pswift@treescolumbus.org.

This story was originally published November 8, 2017 at 5:39 PM with the headline "Organizers hope ‘Wild & Scenic’ film showing will inspire local documentaries."