Saturday evening’s keynote speaker, Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemen Wintu, a strong environmental advocate, will describe her tribe’s efforts to restore Chinook salmon to ancestral lands and waters
The third annual Salmon Film Festival, sponsored by the Salmon Restoration Association, takes place Friday, November 8th, through Sunday, Nov. 10th in Portuguese Hall, 822 Stewart Street.
The Salmon Film Festival features underwater footage, animation, and documentaries on salmon restoration, culture, and ecology. Over thirty short and feature-length films show community-based restoration projects and dam removals, Native American connections to salmon, the dangers of farmed salmon, and beautiful footage of salmon ecosystems throughout the Pacific Northwest.
New to the festival this year is a special cartoon hour on Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 – 11:00 am. Short films including vintage Disney, salmon life cycles set to music, and animations depicting ocean acidification and fish farming will delight and educate both younger and older viewers.
Filmmakers, educators, scientists, practitioners, and local experts will accompany the films and lead the audience in question and answer sessions. The Water Underground, a salmon advocacy theatrical troupe, will perform on Sunday at 3:00 pm. Ocean Harvest Sea Vegetables, Harvest Market, and Thanksgiving Coffee will feature salmon-themed goodies, and Gallery Bookshop of Mendocino will sell salmon-focused books.
The festival keynote speaker, Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemen Wintu, and a strong environmental advocate, will describe her tribe’s efforts to restore Chinook salmon to ancestral lands and waters on Saturday at 5:00pm. The Winnemem Wintu are a traditional salmon tribe from Mt. Shasta who practice their culture and religion within their ancestral territory of the McCloud River watershed. The tribe lost most of their tribal lands, their McCloud River salmon and many of their sacred sites when the Shasta Dam was built in 1943 and flooded 26 miles of the McCloud. Today, the tribe is still fighting a Bureau of Reclamation proposal to raise Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet, which would submerge more sacred sites and severely damage the surrounding ecology.
Chief Sisk will introduce the documentary Dancing Salmon Home, winner of Best Documentary award from the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco. The film depicts efforts by the Winnemen Wintu to restore native Chinook, who were transported around the world as hatchery eggs and survived and thrived in New Zealand waters. Filmmaker Will Doolittle will accompany the Chief during her presentation.
The festival provides educational outreach to Mendocino coastal and inland communities by demonstrating the connections between reviving native salmon populations and revitalizing ecosystems, food webs, and local and traditional communities whose cultures and economies are closely tied to salmon.
The festival website, http://salmonfilmfestival.org/... (with streaming video links to most of the films) attracts thousands of viewers annually, allowing the festival to serve a continuous, year-round educational purpose.
The 2013 Salmon Film Festival is sponsored by the Salmon Restoration Association to support local salmon education and restoration programs. The Association’s fundraiser, barbeque, billed as the World’s Largest Salmon Barbeque, feeds thousands of salmon fans on July 4th weekend who flock to south Noyo Harbor.
Festival seating will be limited, so attendees are encouraged to reserve a spot early! A small donation is requested. Advance reservations are available on Brown Paper Tickets and tickets and passes can also be purchased at the door.
Restore the Delta is a 15,000-member grassroots organization committed to making the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fishable, swimmable, drinkable, and farmable to benefit all of California. Restore the Delta works to improve water quality so that fisheries and farming can thrive together again in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
www.restorethedelta.org