CU-Bloomsburg Green Campus Initiative Announces Documentary Series

Bloomsburg, PA (09/27/2023) — Commonwealth University-Bloomsburg's Green Campus Initiative Film Series will screen several award-winning environmental documentaries this fall. All will be shown at 7 p.m. in Hartline Science Center, Kuster Auditorium, and are free and open to the public.

Films include:

Thursday, Sept. 28 - Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. This feature documentary from the multiple-award-winning team of Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Edward Burtynsky follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group. After nearly ten years of working, they suggest that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century because of long-lasting human changes to the Earth. The film leaves viewers to decide "how the Anthropocene will end."

Thursday, Oct. 12 - Horseshoe Crab Moon with The Crabs, the Birds, the Bay. This Green Campus double feature focuses on the interrelationship of horseshoe crabs and the shorebirds (sandpipers) who gather to feed on their eggs. The films profile scientists and researchers as they study the decline of horse crabs and sandpipers along the East Coast, in particular the Delaware Bay. "Horseshoe crab numbers have been declining rapidly over the last few decades due to the downturn in Delaware Bay's water quality, and the over-harvesting of horseshoe crabs for bait," say producers. "The film also looks at the resulting crash of the red knot, a globe-trotting sandpiper, which depends on horseshoe crabs' eggs for sustenance during its incredible migrations. The numbers of migrating sandpipers have dropped by almost 80 percent in recent years."

Thursday, Nov. 9 - Fixing Food. Directed and produced by Sue Williams, this film offers five vignettes to tell the stories of people who are working to lower our carbon footprint with new ways to gather and prepare food. "Farming in the ocean and the air, finding new food sources, learning from Indigenous agriculture, and rescuing the food we already have," are the five areas that are addressed, say filmmakers. The stories invoke the question: If we change the way we eat, can we save our planet?

For more information about the film series, contact Tim Pelton at tpelton@bloomu.edu