 |
The Wild and Scenic Film Festival |
Panel Biographies
David Branigan
International Programs Director
Bikes Not Bombs
David Branigan works as International Programs Director at Bikes Not
Bombs, coordinating bicycle programs in Africa, Central America and
the Caribbean. David provides technical assistance to international
partners, coordinates bicycle shipping logistics and continually
builds the strategic impact of Bikes Not Bombs International Programs
to use bicycles as vehicles for social change. David began his work
with a degree in Cultural Anthropology from Boston University and a 3
½ year service in the Peace Corps in Ghana, where he organized with
youth and adult community groups to develop community-led initiatives
including compost latrine infrastructure and youth educational
theater. David also recognized the expansive impact that bicycles have
on individuals and communities in the developing world, and he
actively sought out Bikes Not Bombs and started working in its
Boston-based Bike Shop. David later worked as a Bikes Not Bombs
fieldworker for 15 months in Ghana to establish Ability Bikes
Cooperative, a cooperative bike shop owned and operated by physically
challenged people. David trained the Ability Bikes mechanics, helped
establish the business' administration and supported the structuring
of the worker-owned cooperative. Today, David is continuing to
strengthen Bikes Not Bombs International Programs by ensuring the
self-determination and sustainability of each international partner,
and by exploring new ways of focusing impact to build a more just and
sustainable world.
Marion Stoddart
In the early 1960s, Marion Stoddart was a mother of three who decided to take on the impossible - cleaning up the Nashua River, one of the 10 most polluted rivers in the US. Marion mobilized policy makers, business leaders, politicians, and a skeptical public to advocate for what seemed a hopeless toxic sludge pit and petitioned the Federal government for millions of dollars of promised funds to fight the pollution. In all these, Marion Stoddart succeeded! Today, thanks to the efforts of Marion and the Nashua River Watershed Association, the non-profit she founded the river is clean and restored, with wildlife thriving and people swimming.
Stoddart has received many awards including: the UN Environmental Programme's Global 500 Award (1987), the US EPA's Environmental Award (1972), and a presidential commendation (1970). She was profiled in National Geographic (1995) and in an award-winning children's book A River Ran Wild by Lynne Cherry (1992); she was a National Women's History Project Honoree as "One of the Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet" (2009).
A champion of international understanding and an adventurer at heart, Stoddart also founded a worldwide travel adventure business for women over the age of 40, one of the first of its kind. For over 25 years, Marion led groups of women from diverse backgrounds on trips around world to meet and learn from one another.
Stoddart lives with her husband Hugh Stoddart in Groton Massachusetts. They have three children and five grandchildren.
Susan Edwards
Filmmaker
Raised with a love of art, science, people and the planet, The Work of 1000 is Edwards' first documentary. The film is winning awards and recognition around the world. More than a film about saving a river - it is the centerpiece of a larger civic engagement program that inspires people to find their passion and make a positive difference in the world. The civic engagement program, created by Edwards to share Marion Stoddart's compelling story, process, and passion - via film, discussion, and guided exercises - is now used in classrooms, living-rooms, and boardrooms to build skills, and interest and confidence in service leadership.
Edwards also runs a small marketing communications firm, extramile.com, that delivers print, web, identity, and strategy services to public libraries and nonprofits. Her work has been featured in American Libraries, School Library Journal, Boston Globe, Bike Rag, and most recently through Mass Humanities' The Public Humanist.
Sara Peattie
Sara Peattie is the co-founder of the Puppeteers Cooperative, which specializes in community workshops, giant puppets, pageants, and parades. She is a member of The Back Alley Puppet Theater, which operates the Puppet Free Library, and of Puppaganda, which works in toy theater and video, and of The Construction Section which builds puppets and masks. She also runs an informational website about making giant puppets:
http://puppetco-op.org
Saul Wisnia
Author
Fenway Park: The Centennial
The mission of "e" inc. is to encourage Americans to conserve and sustain our planet's assets, and for many Bostonians there is no more valuable asset -- at least from a sentimental standpoint -- than Fenway Park. Major League Baseball's oldest ballpark turns 100 this year, and just this month was added to the National Register of Historic Places, ensuring its preservation for future generations.
Saul Wisnia, a former sports and news correspondent at The Washington Post and currently senior publications editor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has authored a book entitled Fenway Park: The Centennial that tells the story of this wonderful city treasure in vivid prose and beautiful photographs. He'll be with us to sign copies of his book and share tales of the ballpark's history and transition into a more environmentally sound locale. Today there are solar thermal panels on the roof behind home plate, Big Belly solar-powered trashcans throughout the concourses, and all food containers, wraps, beverage cups, and scorebook magazines are made from recycled materials. Fenway Green, Saul assures us, no longer applies only to the park's famous left field wall.
Tribute to Wangari Maathai
TAKING ROOT: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, a new film by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater, tells the inspiring story of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya and its unstoppable founder, Wangari Maathai, who, in 2004, became the first environmentalist and first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
After teaching for 15 years at the University of Nairobi, Professor Maathai discovered the core of her life's work be reconnecting with the rural women of her childhood. Thei daily lives had become intolerable: they were walking exhaustive distances for firewood, clean water was scarce, the soil was eroding, and their children were suffering from malnutrition. One hundred years of colonialism had devestated the forests they'd lived with for centuries.
"Why not plant trees?" Maathai thought. Trees provide shade, prevent soil erosion, supply firewood, building materials, and produce nutrious fruit. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and began teaching women about the connection between environmental problems and their daily problems.
Through the 1980s and '90s, women involved in the Green Belt Movement found themselves working successibly against deforestation, poverty, ignorance, and systemic economic imbalances. They endured violent supression, a hunger strike, and risked personal injury. By 2002, they helped to bring down Kenya's 24-year Moi dictatorship.
Through chilling first person accounts and TV-news footage, TAKING ROOT documents dramatic political confrontations of the 1980s and '90s. Cinema verite footage of the tree nurseries, and the women and children who tend them, captures the real work being done by people to improve their lives and restore the vitality of their land.
TAKING ROOT captures a world-view in which nothing is perceived as impossible. The film also brilliantly demonstrates the undeniable links between environmental action, human rights, and economic justice. Brian Miles of Nashvillescene.com describes the film as "...proof that one small voice of dissent can shake nations."
|
|
|
|
|
|
