Rolling Out the “Redd” Carpet by WCC Crewmember PJ Heusted
Did you miss your chance to attend the Wild and Scenic Film Festival? Don’t worry, PJ’s got you covered on the ins and outs of what you missed!
‘On October 12, Skagit Fisheries hosted the Wild and Scenic Film Festival for one night only at the Lincoln Theater showing a selection of environmental short films. The films ranged from making the audience laugh at one-star reviews of the National Parks to making them cry when confronted with the realities of habitat degradation and climate change’s effects on local salmon populations.
The festival opened with Finding Salmon which featured the Salmon Watch program in Oregon which looks to get school-aged youth out and into streams to see salmon and connect with their local watersheds. After the opener ended, the energy in the theater changed when One Star Reviews started; despite being short, this film got the most laughter as it shared low reviews of some of the nations most beautiful National Parks complaining about the number of rocks and lack of wildlife on display.
The Last Last Hike introduced the audience to Nimblewill Nomad on his attempt to become the oldest person to thru hike the Appalachian Trail and shared the story of his life spent walking, long distance hiking, and time spent at Flagg Mountain.
The film festival’s next film, Black Like Plastic, continued to explore outdoor recreation, but through a different lens. The film features Chris Ragland and his non-profit, The Sea League, in a conversation about environmental justice and recreation as a method for advocacy.
Land of the Yakamas continued to build on the ideas of advocacy and providing a platform to diverse voices as the film demonstrated the importance of indigenous voices in environmentalism and shared accounts of the environmental stressors present along the Columbia River that continue to affect the surrounding indigenous communities.
The next film took us from the Pacific Northwest into the deserts of the Southwest and into the depths of Glen Canyon. In Tad’s Emerging World – Glen Canyon Exposed filmmaker and photographer Dawn Kish retraces the steps of many explorers before her through the viewfinder of a historic camera. Kish blends history, memoir, and environmentalism in her exploration of the canyon as water levels dip to new historic lows.
Rounding out the short films of the first act is I Am Salmon featuring a poem of the same name in which the author takes on the perspective of the salmon to share the narrative of their hard journey to and from the ocean. This film highlights the Japanese printmaking art of gyotaku, using the body of a salmon to create a print while the poem is read.
The final film of the night was Shane Anderson’s The Lost Salmon shared breakthrough research showing distinct genetic differences between spring and fall run Chinook salmon that could work to provide further legal protections for the remaining native stocks. Anderson’s film showed stories of salmon from various rivers across the Pacific coast and highlighted voices from the people that are working to save their native salmon runs. The film took the audience on a journey through the current highs and lows of salmon conservation taking on a hopeful tone for the future of these fish, but stayed rooted in the current difficulties that salmon face in our rivers.
From the Whiskey River Mudflats bluegrass performance that kicked off the night through the final moments of the film festival, the theater was alive with a love for restoration, conservation, and a passion for the environment. The 2023 Wild and Scenic Film Festival felt like a love letter to the outdoors signed by everyone in the theater, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s festival.’
