The South African Eco Film Festival returns to The Bioscope in 2016. IN CINEMA 2 & 3 APRIL The film festival’s mission is simply to raise awareness, through the amazing medium of documentary film, of the many pressing environmental issues the planet is facing, and the solutions people are taking to solve them. This year we have films exploring, among other topics, climate change, food – both wastage and the need to change our eating habits, conservation issues, social justice, recycling (in one case literally up-cycling!) and sustainable energy. We hope you will be informed, inspired, challenged, uplifted and entertained by this year’s Festival offerings. The South African Eco Film Festival is a project of While You Were Sleeping, a non-profit organisation dedicated to bringing documentary films that both entertain and inform with important environmental, social and political messages to South African audiences. PROGRAMME Sat 2nd April 4pm Bikes vs Cars (91 Mins, Sweden, 2015). Bikes vs Cars depicts a global crisis that we all deep down know we need to talk about: climate, earth’s resources, cities where the entire surface is consumed by the car. An ever-growing, dirty, noisy traffic chaos. The bike is a great tool for change, but the powerful interests who gain from the private car invest billions each year on lobbying and advertising to protect their business. In the film we meet activists and thinkers from nine cities and three continents fighting for better cities who refuse to stop riding despite the increasing numbers killed in traffic. 6pm Racing Extinction (94 mins, USA, 2015) Oscar®-winning director Louie Psihoyos (The Cove) assembles a team of artists and activists on an undercover operation to expose the hidden world of endangered species and the race to protect them against mass extinction. Spanning the globe to infiltrate the world’s most dangerous black markets and using high-tech tactics to document the link between carbon emissions and species extinction, Racing Extinction reveals stunning, never-before-seen images that truly change the way we see the world. 8pm Revenge of the Electric Car (90 mins, USA, 2012) When electric cars first appeared on the market in the 1990s, mass production and commercialisation was abruptly – and dubiously – shut down, a story told in Chris Paine’s first documentary Who Killed The Electric Car? Just a few short years later, the race is back on to develop an affordable, stylish electric car and win over a skeptical public. Revenge Of The Electric Car goes behind the closed doors of Nissan, GM, Elon Musk’s innovative Tesla Motors and an independent car converter named Greg “Gadget” Abbott to find the story of the global resurgence of electric cars. Without using a single drop of oil, this new generation of automobile emerges as the future: fast, furious and cleaner than ever. Sun 3rd April 3pm Wastecooking (82 mins, Austria, 2015) David Gross has a car that runs on used vegetable oil, a mobile stove and a host of culinary ideas in his backpack. An entertaining road movie detailing a rather unusual journey through five European countries, where the only thing on the menu is what others call garbage. David whips up creative meals aimed at fighting food waste and our consumption driven society, and at the same time inspires us to search for creative solutions. (German, English, French, Dutch language + English sub-titles) 5pm How To Change the World (109 mins, UK/Canada, 2015) A thrilling, sometimes terrifying, film chronicling the adventures of an eclectic group of young pioneers – Canadian hippie journalists, photographers, musicians, scientists, and American draft dodgers – who set out to stop Richard Nixon’s atomic bomb tests in Amchitka, Alaska, and end up creating the worldwide green movement. When youthful energy comes up against the complexities of a growing organization, and idealism meets compromise, the group find their battle to save the planet forces them also to fight each other. This insightful film is also a vibrant, moving reflection on the struggle to balance the political and the personal. 7pm This Changes Everything (89 mins, USA/Canada, 2015) Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change. Inspired by international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein (pictured below), the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.