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Several years ago the Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF) embarked upon a collaborative project with the environmental film festival group, Planet In Focus (PIF), to offer schools an opportunity to host their own regional environmental film festivals. Schools from across the province applied to host the OTF/PIF Environmental Film Festival, and winning proposals were granted license to screen environmental films from the vast PIF film catalogue.
This year only ten proposals were selected. York Unit OECTA, as a proud sponsor, is pleased to announce that the joint proposal submitted by St. Theresa of Lisieux CHS’s Environmental Council and St. Justin Martyrs CES’s Green Team to host the York Region OTF/PIF Environmental Film Festival was one of the ten winning proposals. St. Theresa’s Environmental Council will be hosting the OTF/PIF York Region Secondary School portion of the film festival, themed on the topic of water, at the CEC on Friday April 15th. STL will be screening two feature films from the PIF catalogue: Flow and H2Oil. In addition, there will be guest speakers, including the Hon. John Wilkinson, Minister of the Environment, the Green Party’s leader, Elizabeth May, and Lake Ontario Waterkeeper CEO Mark Mattson, as well as numerous informative and interactive displays provided by Ontario Streams, the ROM, Project Nestbox, and the SPLASH festival to name but a few. Furthermore, STL’s Environmental Council is encouraging attending high schools to submit their own short environmental film, concerning water, into the student film competition – prizes will be awarded to the winning submissions.
SJM will be hosting the elementary portion of the festival in the evening of Thursday, May 5 at St. Justin Martyrs where they will be screening Home for the Hawksbill and awarding Green Oscars for the best student short film submissions.
For more information on registering for and participating in the secondary school environmental film festival contact yrfilmfestival@gmail.com or matthew.kavanagh@ycdsb.ca and for more information on participating in the elementary school film festival contact pierre.tacchino@ycdsb.ca.