Value of Life and 7 Gramos at Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival

GFDD’s production Value of Life and Globo Verde Dominicano Award winner 7 Gramos will be presented at the 19th annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) April 1 at 10am, at Ithaca College campus. The event will be open to the public and free of charge.

FLEFF will bring a weeklong series of film screenings, performances, presentations and discussions to Ithaca from March 28 to April 3. The
festival embraces and interrogates sustainability across all of its forms: economic, social, ecological, political, cultural, technological and aesthetic. Launched in 1997 as an outreach project from Cornell University’s Center for the Environment, the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival was moved permanently to Ithaca College in 2005. It is housed in the Office of the Provost as a program to link intellectual inquiry and debate to larger global issues.

About Value of Life
This production, directed by Natasha Despotovic, is Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (GFDD)’s most recent short movie. Historically, little value is placed on natural capital when looking at growth equations and socioeconomic development. It is difficult for big businesses, and more so for ordinary people, to quantify
the significance of natural resources and make the value of nature tangible in our daily lives. The production responds to those questions: How much is the natural capital of the Dominican Republic worth? How do we put a price on the ecosystem the planet has given us and that allows us to survive?

Watch trailer here

About 7 Gramos
This film is the winner of the 2015 edition of DREFF’s Globo Verde Dominicano Award (part of the DREFF programs), directed by Hadzael Gómez and Jonatán Vila, is based on a true story.

The story takes place in a small rural community in the Dominican Republic, and recounts the life of a Hispaniolan Emerald (one of the smallest birds in the world, endemic species) who decides to build her nest and lay her eggs in a support pillar of a school building under
construction. Why does the bird choose this place, with all the noise and confusion?  It’s not clear. But the workers decide that they will protect the bird until its eggs are hatched.

Related Links:
http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/
www.dreff.org
www.globalfoundationdd.org
http://vital.dreff.org