Festival News

2022 EarthX Film Festival finds perfect new home: Dallas Arts District

The festival will take place over four days in May.

Photo by Nigel Young / Nigel Young/Foster + Partners

The annual EarthX Film Festival returns for 2022 in May for an exciting four days and more than 75 films, including an opening night world premiere of Deep In The Heart, a film by Ben Masters (The River and The Wall) on wildlife in Texas narrated by Matthew McConaughey.

The festival runs May 12-15 and for the first time will be held in the Dallas Arts District, providing easy accessibility to five theater venues. Each night will feature a musical act performing before a showcase screening.

With the theme "A Celebration of the Outdoors," the festival continues its mission to highlight films and emerging media that celebrate nature, outdoor adventure, environment, conservation, climate change, and science. The lineup includes 24 features, 54 shorts, plus music, art installations, and panel discussions.

They're also welcoming a new sponsor, says EarthX CEO Michael Fletcher in a statement: Curiosity, a media company whose streaming service, Curiosity Stream, delivers films, series, and shows on space, history, nature, tech, and lifestyle on demand. The film lineup will include Curiosity's original film Going Circular, exploring circularity.

"We're thrilled to present films this year that showcase our amazing planet and the people dedicated to making a difference," Fletcher says. "It's always been our vision to create a world-class event that celebrates the spirit of Texas and welcomes global citizens to experience the rich arts culture in Dallas."

For more information and tickets, go to earthxfilmfestival.org or download the app available on iOS and Android.

Opening screening
Opening night will be the world premiere of Ben Masters' film Deep In The Heart, narrated by Matthew McConaughey and the first feature-length wildlife film ever produced about Texas. Filmed over two years, it showcases Texas' species and wild places, the connectivity of water and wildlife, and recognizes Texas' conservation importance on a continental scale.

Masters calls it "a love letter to the diverse and vibrant state that we call home."

Festival favorites
Several festival darlings are also in the lineup, including Fire of Love by Sara Dosa; We Feed People by Ron Howard; The Territory, a Sundance Audience Award winner; Bring Your Own Brigade by Lucy Walker; and To The End by Rachel Lears.

A wide range of filmmakers including award winners Jeff Orlowsky (Chasing Ice), Raj Patel & Zak Piper (The Ants and The Grasshopper), young superstar Lindsey Hagen (California Natural), and several newcomers, including two second-grade brothers making their first film with their father called Life In The Slow Lane.

The films cover a variety of important topics, from the healing experience for veterans through nature (Eric and The Bees, Bastards' Road), to female big-wave surfing (Big vs Small), to tiger poaching (Tigre Gente).

Texas stories
This year's Texas films include Battle For The Heart of Texas about property rights in energy production; When It's Good, It's Good, about oil-drilling communities in West Texas; and REI's Slim Pickins about diversity in outdoor culture.

Short Films
Many of the shorts are associated with brands and film companies including Patagonia’s Raised From the Earth about living off the land, and The Monster In Our Closet, which focuses on plastic in our fashion. The Redford Center is presenting two short films on mass transit: Community Power Arizona: En Nuestrxs Manos (In Our Hands) and Community Power Nevada: Unidxs En Accion (United In Action).

The full list of feature films includes:

Bastards’ Road, Director Brian Morrison
Battle for the Heart of Texas, Director John Brown
Before They Fall, Director Cam MacArthur
Big vs Small, Director Minna Dufton
Reel Rock: Black Ice, Director Peter Mortimer, Zachary Barr
Bring Your Own Brigade, Director Lucy Walker
Chasing Ice, Director Jeff Orlowski
Coextinction, Director Gloria Pancrazi, Elena Jean
Deep in the Heart, Director Ben Masters
Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Director Bill Kroyer
Fire of Love, Director Sara Dosa
Godspeed, Los Polacos!, Director Adam Nawrot
Going Circular, Director Ricard Dale, Nigel Walk
Inhabitants, Director Costas Boutsikaris, Anna Palmer
Learning to Drown, Director Ben Knight
Mountain Revelations, Director Justin Fann
Newtok, Director Michael Kirby, Andrew Burton
Spirit of the Peaks, Director Connor Ryan, Tim Kressin
The Ants and the Grasshopper, Director Raj Patel, Zak Piper
The Territory, Director Alex Pritz
Tigre Gente, Director Elizabeth Unger
To the End, Director Rachel Lears
We Feed People, Director Ron Howard
Zero Gravity, Director Thomas Verrette

Short films are as follows:

80° North, Director Brandon Holmes
All Bodies on Bikes, Director Zeppelin Zeerip
American Scar, Director Daniel Lombroso
An Eye for Detail, Director Matthew Harmer
Bad Boy of Bonsai, Director Juan A. Moreno
Breaking Trail, Director Jesse Roesler
California Natural, Director Lindsey Hagen
Camp Yoshi, Director Faith E. Briggs
Chasing the Sublime, Director Amanda Bluglass
Community Power Arizona: En Nuestrxs Manos (In Our Hands), Director Pita Juarez
Community Power Nevada: Unidxs En Acción (United In Action), Director Nico Cadena
Eric and the Bees, Director Erin Brethauer, Tim Hussin
Finding Gulo, Director Colin Arisman
From My Window, Director Frank Pickell
Humanity Has Not Yet Failed, Director Norma V. Toraya, Jared P. Scott
I am One of the People, Director Cameron Woodle
If I Tell Them, Director Oliver Sutro
Kāhuli, Director Chris Jones
Life in the Slow Lane, Director Sol de Glanville, Ben de Glanville
Like a River, Director Jim Aikman
Listen to the Beat of our Images, Director Audrey Jean-Baptiste, Maxime Jean-Baptiste
Loon, Director Jason Whalen, Chris Zuker
Mission Mountain, Director Kody Kohlman, Andrew Bydlon
Mother of the Sea, Director Nicholas Brown
Mylo, Director Chris Bukard
No Soy Oscar, Director Jon Ayon
Nuisance Bear, Director Jack Weisman, Gabriela Osio Vanden
One Star Reviews: National Parks, Director Alex Massey
Patagonia Provisions: The Ocean Solution Film, Director Darcy Hennessey Turenne
Raised from the Earth, Director Forest Woodard
Rebirth of a Reef, Director Shaun Wolfe
Return to Earth, Director Darcy Wittenburg, Darren McCoullough, Colin Jones
Rockies Repeat, Director Caroline Hedin
Slim Pickins, Director Justin Jeffers
The Captain, Director Gregory Kohs
The Diamond, Director Caitlyn Greene
The Endless Wave, Director Tom Attwater
The Interconnectedness of all Living Things, Director Jenn den Broeder
The Land of Griffons, Director Riccardo Soriano
The Last Last Hike, Director Celene Francois
The Monster in Our Closet, Director Kathryn Bays, Nicole Gormley
The Seeds We Keep, Director Gabriel E.W. Carter
The Seeker, Director Lance Edmands
The Wilderness Within, Director Jason van Bruggen
They Carry Us With Them: Gabriel Frey, Director Jeremy Seifert
Thomas Deininger. Trash Artist., Director Gnarly Bay
To Live Here (sống ở đây), Director Melanie Dang Ho
Wastewater: The Tale of Two Cities, Director Sarah Franke
We Decided to Become Farmers, Director Rob Herring, Ryan Wirick
What Remains, Director Paavo Hanninen
When It Comes from the Earth, Director Katalin Egely
When it's Good it's Good, Director Alejandra Vasquez

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Movie Review

Forrest Gump team reunites for unusual film experiment Here

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Here.

The quality of the career of director Robert Zemeckis can almost be broken evenly in half. His first 12 films, which included the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Forrest Gump, and Cast Away, were mostly hits both with critics and audiences. But in his last 10 films starting with The Polar Express in 2004, Zemeckis has become obsessed with pushing technological boundaries, which has ironically hindered the success of those movies.

His latest boundary-pushing film is Here, which uses the highly unusual technique of never moving the camera. Instead, it’s what happens at this one particular corner of the world that’s of interest, from the time of dinosaurs to the rise of COVID, and many other things in between. The film sees a small parcel of land go through many changes, finally resulting in a house built around 1900, a home that goes on to be occupied by a number of people over the course of 120 years or so.

The most prominent among them are Al (Paul Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly), who buy the house soon after Al comes home from World War II. They raise a family of three children, with one of them, Richard (Tom Hanks), becoming the main focus of the film. He falls in love with Margaret (Robin Wright), has a child of his own, discovers a love of painting, gives up that passion to provide for his family, and more as he spends almost his entire life under the same roof.

The marketing for the film wants to make sure you know that it is the long-awaited reunion of Zemeckis, Hanks, and Wright following the Oscar-winning smash hit that was Forrest Gump (Eric Roth, who wrote Gump, also co-wrote this film with Zemeckis). Zemeckis clearly liked the storytelling from Gump, as much like Forrest being part of many historical 20th century moments, the small area of land in an unnamed Eastern state in Here somehow sees it be both the home of the son of Benjamin Franklin and the inventor of the La-Z-Boy recliner (fact check: not true).

Zemeckis was inspired to use just one angle in the film from the graphic novel by Richard McGuire on which it is based. Similar to the novel, Zemeckis inserts rectangles that show small glimpses of different time periods overlaid on the current scene, fading them in and out to help with transitions. Although at times the film can feel more like theater than a movie, these brief looks at other eras within another era help the film feel more dynamic.

What doesn’t work is the computer-generated imagery in the film. Before the house is built, everything on screen (save for the actors) is CGI and it feels wholly unnatural. And for some reason, Zemeckis has the nearly 70-year-old Hanks and nearly 60-year-old Wright play themselves as young as teenagers, and the de-aging technology simply isn’t believable. As their characters age, the effect improves, but only slightly.

Because the performances of everyone in the film are chopped up into small pieces, it’s tough to say any one of them stands out. As the bigger stars, Hanks and Wright naturally draw attention, and they acquit themselves well. Bettany and Reilly are fine, but they seem to be playing mid-century caricatures instead of actual human beings. Actors in other time periods aren’t given enough to do to be judged properly.

Alternately cheesy and poignant, Here is a bold swing from a filmmaker who has made many in his long career. Because of the inherent emotions that come with following characters over a long period of time, the story has an impact, although it constantly has to contend with Zemeckis trying to distract viewers with displays of technical prowess.

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Here opens in theaters on November 1.

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