Grantees Featured in Our 2021 Film Fest
Our Film Fest grantees from left to right: Citizens for a Healthy Bay, Another World is Possible, Serotiny, Raptors Are the Solution, Clean Water Fund, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Jefferson Land Trust
This year’s film fest showcases over 25 films of grassroots activism and community resilience. These stories speak to the powerful work of communities across the country, including some of our own Rose Foundation grantees. We are proud to spotlight the following grantees featured in our 2021 Film Fest.
Raptor Blues was produced by California Environmental Grassroots Fund grantee, Raptors Are the Solution (RATS). We’re proud to have been supporting RATs for the past 10 years to help them get the message out that rat poison doesn’t just kill rodents, it gets into the food web and kills birds which eat rats and mice. So the more toxic rodenticides we use, the more we all undercut natural solutions to control rodents. By partnering with nonprofits, agencies, scientists, and cities, RATS aims to eliminate the use of rodenticides, keeping wildlife, children, and pets poison free.
PFAS is a film by Clean Water Fund, a California Watershed Protection Fund grantee we’ve been supporting for more than 20 years to help their science-based initiatives for safer water, cleaner air, and protection from toxic pollutants. Their work has improved environmental conditions, reduced health-threatening pollution, and strengthened policies in communities across the country.
Midori Farm follows one of the protected areas in the Jefferson Land Trust. They work with communities in Jefferson County, WA to preserve open space, working lands, and habitat. Their focus on people and place sets them apart from other Land Trusts, viewing the livelihood of humans as intertwined with the livelihood of the environment. But that’s what put them squarely into the bullseye of our Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund, and we were excited to welcome them to our family of grantees last year.
Heroes Among Us: Dez Rae Kai was produced by Another World is Possible, a coalition of Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino county organizations with strong connections to the Rose Foundation. We hosted their Just and Resilient Futures Fund which supported equity-based community resilience responses to the 2017 firestorms, and several of the coalition members including Daily Acts, Sonoma County Conservation Action and Community Alliance of Family Farmers are long-time Rose grantees.
Serotiny is the story of Rose grantee Lead to Life, where young activists come together to transform guns into shovels, which are then used to plant trees alongside victims of gun violence. Lead to Life is a Bay Area collective led by Black-diasporic and queer artists, healers, and ecologists. Bridging racial and environmental justice through ceremony and art practice, Lead to Life explores their commitment to decomposing systems of oppression through what they call applied alchemy – wielding alchemy to provoke radical imagination toward justice. The organization has been a California Environmental Grassroots Fund grantee since 2018.
Environmental Justice Camp is one of many programs run by Citizens for a Healthy Bay in Washington state. Their work to clean up, restore, and protect Commencement Bay and the South Puget Sound has received funding from Rose’s Puget Sound Stewardship and Mitigation Fund since 2012. Citizens for a Healthy Bay brings people together to achieve a clean and healthy bay that benefits the community and its surrounding ecosystems.
Where There Once Was Water features Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemem Wintu tribe. The Winnemem Wintu tribe has been a California Environmental Grassroots Fund grantee since 2006 with its chief and spiritual leader, Caleen Sisk receiving the Anthony Grassroots prize in 2019. The Winnemem Wintu tribe has strong ties to water. Hailing from the Mccloud River, bound between the waters of the Sacramento and Pit River, their name translates to “Middle Water People.” Witnessing the rapid ecological degradation of their native home has driven the Winnemem Wintu people to fight to protect the water from which they were born. From advocating for dam removals to restoring salmon runs, the tribe has been, and continues to be, integral to the health and balance of Northern California’s rivers.
We are tremendously proud of all of our grantees, and excited to showcase their stories of hope and resilience as part of this year’s film fest. We hope you are as inspired by their stories as we are, and invite you to visit our Resources Page to learn more.