Screening note: This digital screening is available to view between 12:01am PT on Friday, October 9, and 11:59pm PT on Sunday, October 18.
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From remote lands and welcoming cultures, from immigration to innovation—we give you nothing but the facts in this program of DocLands short films! Kim Boekbinder and Jim Batt's A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair (US 2020, 9 min) asks, "Do we even have a right to be hopeful? With political and ecological fires raging all around, is it irresponsible to imagine a future world radically better than our own?" After a near-death experience, an Icelandic photographer and former kayaker discovers a newfound passion for surfing and a new perspective worth living for with the birth of his daughter in Chris Burkard’s Unnúr (US 2019, 16 min). Set in one of the most remote and inaccessible volcanic island chains in the world, a scrappy Russian marine biologist encounters sea lion chaos, joyous raptures, and ultimately a greater hope for the earth in Taylor Rees’ From Kurils with Love (US 2020, 24 min). In Bill Wisneski’s The Roads Most Traveled (US 2020, 25 min), a Pulitzer Prize®-winning photojournalist shares heart-wrenching stories of the migration of Central Americans to the United States, revealing the never-ending saga of illegal immigration by individuals desperate to improve their lives. Yosemite’s first park geologist may be the last to study its iconic glaciers—which are threatened by climate change in Alexander Schwartz’s The Last Glaciers in Yosemite (US 2020, 4 min). Living and fishing in the Bodega Bay area for 55 years, Dick Ogg faces challenges with solutions and actions to keep the local fisheries alive as he is forced to confront the realities of a warming ocean in Cynthia Abbott’s Dick Ogg: Fisherman (US 2019, 9 min). In Jordan Manley’s Out on a Limb (Canada 2019, 21 min), engineer Kai Lin teams up with climber Craig DeMartino to design a game-changing prosthetic foot that won’t just level the playing field, but will provide a holy grail for adaptive rock climbers. On a trip to Asmara, Eritrea, we meet a precociously talented 21-year-old cyclist who has dominated the early stages of Africa’s biggest cycle race in James Walsh’s Merhawi (South Africa 2019, 4 min). In Natasha Deganello Giraudie and Michael "Pom" Preston’s One Word Sawalmem (US 2020, 16 min), a young man of the Winnemem Wintu tribe offers a taste of indigenous worldview through his personal story as it relates to a single word of his ancestral language: Sawalmem (Sacred Water). Maya Pisciotto’s Calabria by Feel (US 2020, 9 min) is a tantalizing meditation on growing and cooking "by feel," through the generations. Cho-Liang Lin, a world class violinist and soloist, invites four young students who are all at pivotal stages in their lives to rehearse and perform together in his home country of Taiwan in Jordan Hwang’s Between the Notes (US 2020, 15 min). And finally in Camille Servan-Schreiber’s The Way Home: The Most Vulnerable (US 2020, 10 min), solutions for homelessness become possible when Bay Area organizations and communities work together.