EYF 2025

ENVIRONMENTAL YOUTH FORUM

TUESDAY, APRIL 22 • SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER

CIGARETTE SURFBOARD

TIME: 11:00am – 12:50pm

GRADES: 10-12 + College
STUDY AREAS: Ocean Pollution, Plastic Waste, Sustainability, Ecological Conservation, Surf Culture, Environmental Ethics in Sports

ABOUT THE FILM

In The Cigarette Surfboard, designer and surfer Taylor Lane crafts a functional surfboard from 10,000 discarded cigarette butts collected off California beaches. This innovative creation becomes a powerful symbol in a global campaign to raise awareness about ocean pollution and hold Big Tobacco accountable for its environmental impact. Traveling worldwide, Taylor engages with professional surfers dedicated to ocean conservation through science, education, art, business, and activism. Featuring insights from notable figures like musician and environmentalist Jack Johnson, the documentary immerses viewers in the surfing community’s efforts to protect our oceans, illustrating how grassroots initiatives can inspire significant environmental change.

NOTE: This film contains sone strong language, including occasional explicit words

PROGRAM DURATION: 110 minutes

WATCH TRAILER

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FUTURE COUNCIL

TIME: 12:00pm – 1:40pm

GRADES: 5-8
THEMES: Climate Change, Sustainability, Renewable Energy, Ecological Conservation, Global Citizenship, Environmental Policy, Activism

ABOUT THE FILM

In The Cigarette Surfboard, designer and surfer Taylor Lane crafts a functional surfboard from 10,000 discarded cigarette butts collected off California beaches. This innovative creation becomes a powerful symbol in a global campaign to raise awareness about ocean pollution and hold Big Tobacco accountable for its environmental impact. Traveling worldwide, Taylor engages with professional surfers dedicated to ocean conservation through science, education, art, business, and activism. Featuring insights from notable figures like musician and environmentalist Jack Johnson, the documentary immerses viewers in the surfing community’s efforts to protect our oceans, illustrating how grassroots initiatives can inspire significant environmental change.

NOTE: This film contains sone strong language, including occasional explicit words

PROGRAM DURATION: 110 minutes

WILD & SCENIC FILM FESTIVAL ON TOUR

TIME: 10:00am – 11:00am

GRADES: K-5
THEMES: Wildlife, Oceans, Land Preservation, Adventure

This collection of short films was curated for elementary school students from the 2024 Wild & Scenic Film Festival (WSFF), held each year in Nevada City and Grass Valley, California. Like EYF, the festival is designed to inspire environmental activism and a love for nature through film.

PROGRAM DURATION: 60 min

THE PROGRAM INCLUDES:

BIOPIXELS
3 minutes | Wildlife, Art, Animation
Butterflies and moths comprise 12% of all species known to man (180,000 species!), and their seemingly endless biodiversity is visually translated on their wings through color and pattern variation. Biopixels explores the world of evolutionary biology on a microscopic scale. Using the latest light microscope technology, butterfly wings become micro-mosaics. The images in this film have not been altered but were animated to demonstrate both subtle and dramatic evolutionary development and variation.

BRAVE GIRL
8 minutes | Adventure, Youth, Family
Brave Girl is a strong young adventurer who, with the help of her grandpa, is beginning her journey of finding out what it takes to climb mountains. Even though she’s only 6, she has an unwavering ambition to climb the biggest mountains in the world, starting with the ones in her backyard in Wyoming.

JOJO – A TOAD MUSICAL
8 minutes | Wildlife, Activism
The film celebrates a creative and musical portrait of JoJo Nyaribo, a young nature lover and wildlife advocate, as he explores the meaning of biodiversity and stewardship in his backyard.

KIND OF FISHY
5 minutes | Adventure, Youth, Oceans, Art
Imagination and reuse – themes that entwine and enforce for both healthy minds and earth. Kind of Fishy aims to inspire just that: to encourage kids of all ages to look at things from a slightly different perspective. You might not see it at first glance. But tilt your head slightly, blink, and look again – now, what do you see?

MEL FELL
7 minutes | Animation, Wildlife
One day, when Mama bird is away, Mel decides it is time to learn to fly. She has been in the nest long enough. Despite the fears of her cautious siblings, Mel takes to the sky…and plummets. But while a host of tree-dwelling animals tries to intervene, can Mel master the art of flight?

THE TUNDRA
3 minutes | Art, Land Preservation, Wildlife
Canadians who grew up between the city and backcountry, influenced by what we love – downtowns, outdoor hockey, polar bears, the cabin, hip hop, skate culture, and outside misadventures. But, their creative inspiration always connects back to a simple source: the wild.

YOU ARE NOT SMALL
3 minutes | Animation, Youth

Lucy Hawking, award-winning children’s book author, and daughter of scientist Stephen Hawking, makes science accessible and engaging through her numerous books. Her latest book series, Princess Olivia Investigates, is about a young girl who would rather be a scientist than a princess. You Are Not Small was inspired by Olivia.

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TEND THE LAND: COMMUNITIES SPARKING CHANGE FOR THE FUTURE

TIME: 10:30am – 11:00am

GRADES: K-5
THEMES: Wildlife, Oceans, Land Preservation, Adventure

Featuring both local and international stories, this documentary shorts program highlights four vibrant community movements of change and resistance, while also focusing on the personal narratives embedded in environmental activism and displacement.

Tend the Land: Communities Sparking Change for the Future uncovers the buried voices from the Dodger Stadium in L.A. in PALMAS and explores the labor and environmental justice struggles of the farmworker community in Salinas in LOS NUEVOS CANARIOS. USUGILIX AWAKEN takes us to a remote island where a staple cultural food has become toxic, and finally, MANCOLONA invites us into the beauty of the Mayan jungle. Each documentary film brings forward the possibility of collective change, humanity’s role in environmental activism, and positive change if one tends the land.

Joining us for a mix of in person and virtual Q&A are Directors Megan Martinez and Brenda Avila (Los Nuevos Canarios), Producer Gabriel Diamond and Director Ángel Linares (Mancolona), Director Palmer Morse and film subject Shayla (Usugilix Awakun), and Director Aric Lopez and Producer Ana Flavia Bresciani da Veiga (Palmas).

PROGRAM DURATION: 63 minute program + 20 minute Q&A

THE PROGRAM INCLUDES:

LOS NUEVOS CANARIOS
20 minutes | US
Directed by Megan Martinez, Brenda Avila
A resilient farmworker community in California’s Central Coast, bound by shared struggles, empowers itself to defend its health and the land, sparking a movement for environmental and labor justice.

USUGILIX AWAKUN
12 minutes | US
Directed by Palmer Morse, Matt Mikkelsen
In the waters off the remote island of Iluulux̂ or so called Unalaska, Alaska, toxic algal blooms are increasingly infecting filter feeding shellfish with unknown causation. After a community member died from eating blue mussels, a staple cultural food, Unangax̂ scientist Shayla began working with her tribe to research and understand the harmful blooms and what can hopefully be done about them. Illuminating the profound connection between the Unangax̂ people and their environment, Usugilix Awakun showcases the resilience and resourcefulness of a culture in the face of unprecedented challenges.

PALMAS
21 minutes | US
Directed by Aric Lopez
Rooted in the subversive tradition of Mexicanidad, “Palmas” confronts viewers with the haunting histories of the Kizh-Gabrieleño tribe, the Chavez Ravine evictions at Dodger Stadium, and the Palm Tree, presenting a triptych experience of the buried voices of Los Angeles.

MANCOLONA
10 minutes | Mexico
Directed by Ángel Linares
A young Tzeltal embarks on a fun odyssey to make a video about his community, overcoming the challenges of being an indigenous communicator in the Mayan jungle and showing us the power of technology in the defense of the territory.

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ENVIRONMENTAL YOUTH FORUM

CIGARETTE SURFBOARD

FUTURE COUNCIL

WILD & SCENIC FILM FESTIVAL ON TOUR

TEND THE LAND: COMMUNITIES SPARKING CHANGE FOR THE FUTURE

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