The Princeton Environmental Film Festival is back, and this year’s opening weekend features two hard-hitting events that will explore the impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy:
Sunday, January 27th, 1pm
Screening: I’m Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad and the Beautiful (POV 2012, 91 minutes)
In 2005, Academy Award®-winning director Jonathan Demme set out to document the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina and the rebuilding of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. When he met Carolyn Parker, what began as a historical documentary morphed into a vibrant character study of the courage and resiliency of this fearless matriarch and civil-rights activist. I’m Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful is Demme’s intimate account of Parker’s five-year crusade to rebuild her beloved neon-green house, her church, her community — and her life.
Producer Daniel Wolff, author of The Fight for Home: How Parts of New Orleans Came Back, and Kyrah Julian, Ms. Parker’s daughter who is featured in the film, will participate in a post-screening Q&A.
Sunday, January 27, 4pm
Panel Discussion: “Hurricane Sandy, Climate Change and the Future of Our Coastline”
The panel features filmmaker Ben Kalina, film editor Marc D’Agostino, journalist Michael Lemonick and professional planner and New Jersey Institute of Technology adjunct instructor Tom Dallessio. They will discuss how climate change will factor into development of coastal communities. Kalina’s film and video projects focus on the intersection of science, culture and the environment. He has worked on the documentaries “Two Square Miles” and “A Sea Change,” and is the director/producer of grand-prize winning fiction shorts and documentaries. Kalina’s work in progress, “Shored Up,” is about beach erosion. Lemonick is the senior staff writer at Climate Central and a former senior science writer at Time magazine. He has also written for Discover magazine, Yale Environment 360, Scientific American, and others. He is the author of “The Georgian Star,” “Echo of the Big Bang” and “Other Worlds: The Search for Life in the Universe.” Dallessio is leading a new program at NJIT on resilient design that combines applied research, experiential learning and civic engagement to provide federal, State and local officials, business owners and residents with actionable 21st Century ready-to-build designs and expertise for disaster recovery in areas hard hit by Hurricane Sandy.
