On April 16th, Cascade Crossroads screened at the International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. Besides an appreciative audience, there was an engaging Q&A afterwards. It was inspiring and humbling to be shown alongside so many world-class films and meet so many fantastic filmmakers. The passion for wildlife and ecological issues was overflowing! Many thanks to Craig and Alicia for putting me up for my stay, and to all the staff at IWFF for their hard work and hospitality.
This week was our very first public screening here in Seattle, shown to a sold-out audience at The Royal Room. Jen Watkins from Conservation Northwest introduced the film to a rousing audience, and it was followed by a panel discussion led by former Secretary of Transportation Doug MacDonald and included myself, Katie Ramine from the Woodland Park Zoo, and Mark Norman and Josh Zylstra from the Washington State Department of Transportation.
It's been a great pleasure to experience the reaction of audiences at these first screenings.
On behalf of all of the team behind Cascade Crossroads, I'm so proud to announce that our film has been accepted into this year's International Wildlife Film Festival, taking place in Missoula, Montana, April 14 - 22, 2018.
This will be our first film festival of we hope will be many in the coming months. Screening details will be posted here as they become available.
Thank you IWFF!
courtesy of the International Wildlife Film Festival
When Daniel Cohn, the Title Designer for Cascade Crossroads, sent me the film poster that he designed my eyes nearly popped out of my head. This should get people's attention.
It's with great pride that I'm announcing that Cascade Crossroads, the thirty minute documentary film commissioned by the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition has been completed. In fact, it's already been delivered to the theater in anticipation of the private sponsor screening on January 9th, 2018. The 120+ in attendance will include sponsors, including Patagonia, Sierra Club, Conservation Northwest, Forterra and many others, as well as many of the interviewees through whom the story is told.
From the press release:
Cascade Crossroads is a 30-minute documentary film chronicling the story unfolding over and under Interstate 90 just east of Snoqualmie Pass in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Here at the intersection of a major east-west transportation corridor and a crucial north-south wildlife migration corridor, a monumental project combining conservation, collaboration, and innovation led to the construction of North America’s largest wildlife crossings project in conjunction with major infrastructure improvements for motorists.
The I-90 Snoqualmie Pass East Project, and the wildlife crossings and roadway improvements within it, is a win-win for people and animals that offers a new model for major infrastructure projects bisecting wild places. Commissioned by the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition, the Cascade Crossroads film aims to not only share this unique story but also inspire action in other landscapes facing similar tensions between wildlife and roadways.
The film is produced, filmed and edited by myself along with producers Sandy Dang Asher and Kristoffer Browne, my collaborators of many years, and executive produced by Charlie Raines and Jen Watkins of the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition.
Information on screenings and streaming availability will be forthcoming.
I'm very excited to share with the world what we've been working on for nearly two years!
Yesterday I got to shoot footage at the Washington State Fire Fighter Academy during training sessions with Bob Pennington for a great project he and Jen are doing through their company Rhizome Designs. It was cold and wet but we got some great footage. It was rather surreal sitting by the big door of their training building where they had live fires and new recruits getting real experience fighting fires, with their masks and the view I had through my camera it was like I was filming in the trenches during World War I.
This winter our film making team (Sandy Asher, Kris Browne and myself) has completed the first phase of making our documentary on the story of wildlife passages came to be included in major highway renovations on I-90 at Snoqualmie Pass.
We now have ten new interviews filmed with people from all angles of the story: Brian White and Randy Giles of WSDOT, Patty Garvey Darda and Peter Singleton of the US Forest Service, Washington State Senator Curtis King of Yakima, Representative Judy Clibborn of Mercer Island, conservation leaders Mitch Friedman of Conservation Northwest, Jon Hoekstra of Mountains to Sound Greenway, and Gene Duvernoy of Forterra, and Janet Ray of AAA.
Additionally, I’ve spent many days shooting footage on the ground and in the air, flying with LightHawk pilot Lane Gormley and UAV operator Richard Gillette.
We are excited to begin shaping our story and to continue filming through the coming months. The film is scheduled to be completed later in 2017.
In recent times I took to the air for two projects shooting aerial footage, the first being for Forterra. Forterra is a fantastic conservation organization working to both protect lands and enhance communities living on them. I flew with Charlie Raines, Director of Forest Conservation, and pilot Lane Gormley of LightHawk, up the Great Northern Corridor which runs up from Everett, WA, up to Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains, following US Hwy 2 and the Snohomish and Skykomish Rivers. We documented a number of sites along the way where Forterra is making an impact for Washington State residents and wildlife.
The other flight was to capture footage of I-90 from Seattle up to Snoqualmie Pass for “Cascade Crossroads”, the documentary I’m working on for the I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition. While it was a challenge fighting some stubborn clouds, with Lane’s expert piloting I got some gorgeous footage showing why this particular point in the Cascades is so special.
I can't say enough great things about the work and generosity of LightHawk, an organization of pilots who donate flight time and resources for environmental causes. Thank you Christine and Lane!
So cool to have my 3D video, "Eventually They Melt" featuring music and performance by Seattle artist London James, is playing in the LA 3D Movie Festival this weekend. The festival is organized by Eric Kurland, who is also the creative energy behind the 3-D Space as well. Other 3D gems showing this weekend include Nick Cave's new film 'Once More With Feeling', which I hope to see soon as I suspect it's pretty intense...
