Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival 2008

This latest documentary from Northern California filmmaker Les Blank (Burden of Dreams, Gap-Toothed Women and first-time director Gina Leibrecht), is a voyage of discovery, an exploration into the world of tea as seen through the eyes of American tea expert and merchant, David Lee Hoffman. Hoffman is obsessed with tea; during his youth, he spent four years with Tibetan monks in Nepal, which included a friendship with the Dalai Lama, and was introduced to some of the finest tea, the golden nectar with which we can taste the distant past. Today, Hoffman travels the same route in China as one Robert Fortune, a British botanist, who in the 1840s, traveled incognito through China, gathering the finest teas. Hoffman is after the finest handmade, organic teas that reflect the areas where the plant was grown in China and the talent of its maker. He worries that these small farmers could disappear in a society devoted to production of scale, so even as he buys tea, he is always advocating for the farmer, natural fertilizer and fair trade. After the film there will be a Q&A with filmmaker Les Blank and a Tea Ceremony presented by David Wong of Tillerman Tea Company Please note: Online ticket sales end 24 hours before each event. Tickets may still be available for purchase at the venue.

PASEO, EcoCinema, Food On Film Food focus don't get any tastier than "The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab." Following Spanish master chef Jesus Almagro as he prepares for the Bocuse d'Or, a top cooking contest, vet lenser-turned-docu helmer Jose Luis Lopez-Linares masters all the ingredients required for a delightful confection, achieving the perfect balance between a tense competition and likeable personalities. Docu is certain to become a staple on cooking channels, but before then, it could easily burst out of the fest circuit and onto select screens. (Variety)

In a large Ugandan city, everyone has a niche to fill; food venders play a vital role of getting cheap food from preparers to the people working in the streets and offices of the busy city. The film is an opportunity to see a unique way of life, where people have niches to fill that allows them to make a meager living with grace and dignity. Please note: Online ticket sales end 24 hours before each event. Tickets may still be available for purchase at the venue.

This inspiring film is a profile of renegade architect Michael Reynolds, who for 30 years has led a crew in the New Mexico desert in designing "Earthship Biotecture"-housing that uses recycled products and is completely self-sufficient. His ingenuity in creating such buildings is as rousing as his failures to persuade the state government to let him continue his experiments are frustrating. British filmmaker Oliver Hodge followed Reynolds over a period of three years, and cannily juxtaposes his bureaucratic battles with successes working with survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami and hurricane Katrina. It's a genuinely inspirational film on a subject where we could stand some hope.

Over the past 43 years, ChevronTexaco has intentionally spilled over 10 times the amount of oil in and around Lago Agrio, Ecuador, than was lost in the Exxon Valdez disaster and yet not one drop has been cleaned up. An area of pristine rain forest the size of Rhode Island has been devastated and 1 tribe of indigenous Indians has been wiped out. For those remaining natives, water supplies are completely contaminated and serious health issues such as cancer, leukemia, birth defects and skin disease run rampant, affecting every family. An epic lawsuit - one of the largest environmental suits in history - is brewing between Los Affectados (The Affected Ones, a group of 30,000 settlers and indigenous people) and ChevronTexaco's army of international lawyers whose attitude towards this has been a combination of strong armed intimidation and complete denial. Standing up against them is Pablo Fajardo, a humble unassuming man, who was born the same year Texaco came to Ecuador. Having worked the oil fields before putting himself through law school, he graduated only 3 years ago and is now the lead lawyer in the case during which time his brother was murdered, the killers mistaking him for Pablo, and his office containing over 80,000 court documents has been burglarized and ransacked. On top of that the Judge has survived an assassination attempt and tribal leaders have been beaten up and threatened. Is this big business or organized crime? `It's time for action; it's time for Justicia Ya!

Free Ranging Food for Thought -- Farmer Joel Salatin is considered by many as the “high priest of the pasture.” Restaurant reviewers say Chef Cathal Armstrong “steeps into another reality using local ingredients…to produce dishes that are subtly, intriguingly unique.” As the two connect on film, along with Armstrong's kids, Eve 7 and Eammon 4, on the rolling pastures of Joel Salatin's idyllic Polyface Farm, we get a lesson in where our food comes from and how to care for the land. From seeing how “pig power” builds the compost and happy chickens are left to express their “chickeness”, wandering freely in the pasture, we experience the circle of life on the farm. Farmer Salatin shows how his animals “do the real work”-fertilizing, aerating, composting-making clean food for the community without fertilizer, antibiotics and other harmful chemicals. Salatin is an odditiy in a world dominated by corporate mega-farms which foster soil destroying mono-cultures. He says 'We are in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.' Please note: Online ticket sales end 24 hours before each event. Tickets may still be available for purchase at the venue.

EcoCinema -- As a virtuosic example of cinematography One Water excels, as a profound musing on the worlds water crises by a major American institution of higher education it is even more remarkable. Filmmaker Sanjeev Chatterjee vice dean of the University of Miami's school of communication, has made a profoundly engaging film that is designed to motivate people to get moving and make a difference. You will never look at a bottle of water in the same way again. The film intersperses a number of interviews (including the Dalai Lama), with a series of mini-Vignettes often told without dialog that conveys the role water plays the world over. Beautiful cinematography by UM professor Ed Talavera give this film it's majestic sweep and momentum. Befitting the ambitions of the film for a world wide audience Co-writer and editor Ali Habashi has created the vignettes to be stand alone stories that will have context for viewers of all ages and cultures. ''We want the movie to bring attention to the water crisis and inspire people to feel that this is something we can address, as individuals or in groups,'' said director Chatterjee."" This is both a celebration of the power that water has in our lives and a warning not to take this liquid form of life for granted.

The relentlessly engaging story, a true story wrote with drama that Hollywood couldn't produce on its best days. One of the most moving, interesting, happy and sad films to grace the screen.You don't have to be a whale-lover to be significantly moved by this documentary.

The Dirty Story About Soil -- At its most basic elements, land-based food is dependent on sunlight, water and soil. But most people have no idea how important healthy soil is for the creation of nourishing food. Not only are we dependent on soil, but the condition of the earth (and Earth) relates directly to the issues of climate change and resource depletion. Directed by Deborah Koons Garcia (The Future of Food ), Seeds of In Good Heart features scientist Dr. Charles Benbrook, geomorphologist Dr. David Montgomery, physicist and activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, and organic farmers Klaas Martens and Peter Segger. Sharing their collective wisdom and experience, it's easy to understand and appreciate the mysterious nature of soil and the billions of organisms and relationships that make up its composition. This short film seeks to awaken the public to the importance of preserving and rebuilding this essential resource, which is the foundation of sustainable agriculture. If we are what we eat, then, we need to get our fingers back in the earth and get our hands dirty. Please note: Online ticket sales end 24 hours before each event. Tickets may still be available for purchase at the venue.