The environmental film series at the annual Vancouver International Film Festival appears to have blossomed this year with over a dozen films dealing with issues ranging from food waste and sustainable seafood to climate change and the tar sands.

Some of them are surprising for their genre: Burning Ice brings artists, musicians and poets to the Arctic, and People of a Feather takes us intimately into the lives of Inuit whose very existence depends on the down of eider ducks.

Premiering on Tuesday is a film about Canada's energy use by local filmmaker Charles Wilkinson and produced by his partner, artist Tina Schliessler. I'm particularly excited to see this one as I've known the family since my childhood. Peace Out features interviews with both opponents and proponents of our current destructive energy systems, and aerial footage of the tar sands in Alberta, a project so massive it can be seen from space. Seen from a plane, it's utterly heartbreaking. Ultimately, we all need to use less energy.

You might expect a film about a Vancouver couple who spend a year almost zero-waste and without buying any stuff to be a tale of unimaginable hardship and sacrifice. Indeed, the prospects of using the same toothbrush for 365 days, not replacing worn-out clothing, or making crackers from scratch are daunting but The Clean Bin Project's Jen and Grant take a delighted, energetic approach akin to Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon's The 100-Mile Diet, but on the screen. The project was for them a competition for who could produce the least amount of garbage by year's end (I won't tell you who won), and involved learning about plastics, asking for their cheese unwrapped in their reusable container, and making the most of an old razor. Their enthusiasm was infectious. The 76-minute film is merely a glimpse at an entire year, but if it suggests anything about the 525,600 minutes they spent saving the planet, I think they enjoyed most of them.

Their artistically delicious film intersperses their own narrative of discovery — and occasional humourous disappointment — with the broader view of our consumption-based lifestyle and its consequences: successful community recycling initiatives; the Pacific Garbage Patch (which is twice the size of Texas); albatross death by plastic; landfills; and incomprehensibly large volumes of disposable stuff as depicted by Seattle artist Chris Jordan.

I was very fortunate to have attended David Suzuki's Legacy Lecture in December, 2009. It's hard to believe it's been over a year since that evening at the Chan Centre that induced goosebumps and inspired the longest standing ovation I've ever witnessed. It became a book and award-winning documentary, and this Sunday, the venerable CBC airs Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie at 8pm. (Repeats April 3.)

I knew the power of his voice and his story the first time I heard him speak in our humble gathering space at the Foundation's office. I'd never been to one of his lectures but I knew David had been toiling over his Legacy speech for quite some time before the nearly flawless delivery that evening, an intensely rehearsed and refined story that dances its way into our hearts. Like any good story it hits varying emotional points, triggers tears and joy, but inevitably leaves us feeling uplifted. If his intent as an environmentalist and scientist was really about fear-mongering like detractors suggest, the mood at the end would have been gripped in paranoia, instead of the recognition that we can dream, imagine and create, together, a future in which we live within the limits of nature. That future is not a return to dark ages; indeed, it's full of vivid life, community and bright ideas. It's a future where we're no longer talking about "being green," it's intrinsically our way of life. What is so fearful about that?

Will Allen harvesting (Photo credit: Growing Power)

Back-to-back films on agriculture at the World Community Film Festival this afternoon left me uplifted and feeling like change is on the horizon. Dirt! The Movie, Fresh and A Thousand Suns reminded me how many people there are who think like me — including those attending the event — and what amazing impacts these people are making around the world.

One farmer in the US took it upon himself to build a wind farm on his farm as security for survival. (Actually, I think that was part of Dirty Business, a film about coal and energy which followed. I saw four films in 6 hours, so please forgive me if I confuse them.) Will Allen, a former basketball player, returned to his family's farming roots and started Growing Power, where compost is everything. Joel Salatin is a farming hero, Michael Pollan speaks the truth in terms people can understand, schools are tearing up asphalt for gardens, and rehabilitation programs for inmates are reconnecting people with the land.

The 10th annual World Community Film Festival presents "social justice and environmental films set around the world and across the street." Opening tonight, it runs through Sunday afternoon at Langara College.

I'm particularly interested in films like Dirt! and Fresh, both to do with sustainable agriculture. There are films on water, pollution and biodiversity as well. Also, if you missed it in theatres, Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie plays Sunday at 3:30pm.

Come check out this variety of films that address social justice and environmental issues — two things that are inextricably linked!

This daily green blog challenge is in celebration of David Suzuki's 75th birthday, supporting the David Suzuki Foundation. Please help me out by sponsoring me online now.
Note: I am writing solely on my own behalf, and do not claim to represent the David Suzuki Foundation or its views here.

It's a familiar pattern now: Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon ate locally for a year and wrote a book about it; Jen and Grant went zero-waste for a year, blogged and filmed a documentary about it. If doing either of those things doesn't seem crazy and transformative enough, Colin Beavan's family of three did both for a year, and turned off their electricity (for 6 months), self-powered their transportation, went vegetarian and stopped using toilet paper. The project, No Impact Man, is a film, a book and a blog about eliminating one's personal impact on the environment.

The point of doing something this extreme, he cautioned, was not to suggest that everyone do it, but that everyone can do something. Individual actions, he says, inspire and engage others to act. That's the power of community, something he says has eroded. It's also a challenge to us to consider what really is necessary for daily life and what we could do without. As Colin puts it, living with a low impact is about "doing more good than harm." At the end of their year, Colin's wife Michelle decided she'd like to keep cycling (something she'd never have considered a year earlier) and not bring back their TV — except on vacation.

This afternoon I saw my second* feature-length film at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks), directed by Dany Boon, who also plays one of the main characters.

In a desperate attempt to appease his unhappy wife with a transfer to the French Riviera, Philippe Abrams (played by the very charming Kad Merad) instead gets sent to the middle of nowhere. The town of Bergues to be exact, in a remote corner of northern France called the Pas de Calais. Here the locals have their own way of doing things, and saying things. The townspeople speak a dialect called Ch'ti, which to Philippe's ears is little more than gibberish. At first, Philippe has trouble understanding what anyone has to say, let alone being able to make any friends. But as the rural eccentrics gradually worm their way into his affections, he comes to appreciate the gentle pace of life in his new home. — From The Guardian, via VIFF.org