PLEASE JOIN US MONDAY, JULY 30th at 7PM
Special Screening of New Documentary Film and Discussion
Finger Lakes Bioneers presents:
YERT – (Your Environmental Road Trip)
Where: Greenstar’s “The Space” venue– access via northside of 700 W. Buffalo St. Just west of N. Fulton St. at the intersection with W. Court St. parking is available — across from Finger Lakes Fabricating. Free Admission, but donations welcome. About 70 minutes for film plus time for discussion. THANKS TO PURITY ICE CREAM for donating a special treat for attendees!
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This special New York version of the film will be introduced by two of its traveling producers whose own story is a topical component– Ben Evans and Julie Dingman Evans, actors turned real world sustainability ‘detectives’… This project has been underway for five years and is based around a 50-state research tour into the environmental challenges and potential solutions that citizens and activists are engaged with across the country; the documentary offers a combination of serious and humorous insights.
In the discussion afterwards we will explore:
– the changing roles of citizens and innovators,
– balancing denial, dangers, doom with potential for the positive,
– strategies for communicating across various media.
Ben Evans graduated from Stanford University in 1994 with a BS in Science, Technology, and Society. After working as an actor for a decade in LA and NYC, Ben found himself looking for a way to marry his creative urges with his abiding passion for the environment and a growing concern about the future. Looking for adventure and a sense of greater purpose, Ben launched YERT in 2006 with his college buddy, Mark Dixon, and convinced his exceedingly understanding wife, Julie, to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. This is his first feature film.
Since earning a BFA in Dance from Western KY and an MFA in Acting from the U. of Louisville, Julie Dingman Evans has toured shows professionally across the United States and Europe. She will be acting in two theatrical productions in Auburn NY this June and July. Her major role in “Kiss Me Kate” just concluded at the Merry Go Round Playhouse- where she has appeared over numerous summers.
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/////// Excerpted from review by Jeff Biggers
***To be sure, the YERT film team — led by former engineer Dixon and Off Broadway performers and veteran actors Julie Dingman Evans and Ben Evans — is no stumbling act of innocents. Vowing to keep to a rigorous low impact lifestyle on the road, the filmmakers set off to interview some of the most important voices in the environmental and sustainable living movements today, including Bill McKibben and Wes Jackson. The crew’s infectious drive lends an almost exuberant air to their often difficult journey, as theYERT team attempts to go “beyond hope,” as one philosopher tells them at the Green Festival in San Francisco, and seek efforts that are “independent of hope and despair, and totally creative.”
While the film is at its best when it focuses on energy and food production and consumption, YERT transcends any glib answers or simplistic blueprints and investigates changing lifestyles and community planning choices. From a “living roof” atop Chicago skyscrapers or the Ford factory in Michigan, to traditional Native American mud huts in Nebraska, cave dwellings in Idaho and pioneering carbon-free “Earthships” in New Mexico, the film looks at efforts to transition from devastating fossil fuel operations and reckless consumption to more sustainable ways of living.
Standing on the edge of a massive mountaintop removal strip mining site at Kayford Mountain, West Virginia, celebrated activist Larry Gibson warns them to “use your anger to get over your fear and change it. Because you’re the only one who can.”
In fact, YERT unfolds into an increasingly clearer vision that the environmental movement must shift from an agenda on doing “less harm” to taking effective and immediate actions that are restorative and regenerative.***
