Environments & Ecologies

Thematic collections of films on the only world we live on and the changes it is going through and what they may mean for us and our children, and their children.

Share
  • Cooked: Survival by ZIP Code

    Directed by Judith Helfand • Documentary • 2020 • 82 minutes

    Chicago suffered the worst heat disaster in U.S history in 1995, when 739 residents--mostly elderly and black-died over the course of one week. As Cooked: Survival by ZIP Code links the deadly heat wave's devastation back to the underl...

  • The Lost Bird Project

    Directed by Deborah Dickson • Documentary • With Todd McGrain, Andrew Stern • 2012 • 56 minutes

    Gone and nearly forgotten in extinction, the Labrador Duck, the Great Auk, the Heath Hen, the Carolina Parakeet, and the Passenger Pigeon leave holes not just in the North American landscape but in ou...

  • Written on the Landscape

    Directed by Anna Sofaer • Documentary • With Christopher Beaver • 2024 • 58 minutes

    Written on the Landscape: Mysteries Beyond Chaco Canyon conveys to viewers the brilliant achievements of the Chaco civilization -- many of which are in grave danger today. This documentary reveals the astounding ...

  • Bestiaire

    Directed by Denis Côté • Documentary • 2012 • 72 minutes

    Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is Denis Côté's mesmerizing meditation on the relationship between man and beast. This strikingly beautiful film about looking-starts with a group of art students attempting to sketch an animal-that blu...

  • A Crack in the Mountain

    Directed by Alastair Evans • Documentary • 2022 • 99 minutes

    Deep in the jungle of Central Vietnam, lies a magnificent underground kingdom. Hang Son Ðoòng which translates as “mountain river cave”, is located in the Phong Nha-Ke Bàng National Park in Quang Bình Province. It is the largest cave p...

  • How To Power A City

    Directed by Melanie La Rosa • Documentary • With Costa Constantinides, Juan Shannon, Thomas Meyer • 2024 • 73 minutes

    "How To Power A City" is a singular film as the first clean energy documentary that puts communities at the center. It showcases local solutions in the US and Puerto Rico, while ...

  • The Illusion of Abundance

    Directed by Erika Gonzalez Ramirez, Matthieu Lietaert • Documentary • 2022 • 58 minutes

    Please note the caption file must be turned on to see the English subtitles.

    Three women share a common goal: Carolina, Bertha and Maxima are leading today's fight against modern conquistadors. Whereas gover...

  • The Last Tourist

    Directed by Tyson Sadler • Documentary • With Dr. Jane Goodall, Lek Chailert, Elizabeth Becker • 2022 • 100 minutes

    Travel is at a tipping point. Tourists around the world are unintentionally destroying the very things they’ve come to see. From the Caribbean, to the streets of Delhi, and remote ...

  • On the Wandering Paths (w/ Jean Dujardin)

    Directed by Denis Imbert • Drama • 2024 • 95 minutes

    A celebrated writer with a penchant for extreme experiences and solo treks, Pierre (Jean Dujardin), is a survivor of his own life. He has always done everything on his terms. One drunken evening, he climbs the facade of a building and falls se...

  • A Shepherd

    Directed by Louis Hanquet • Documentary • 2024 • 70 minutes

    In the mountains of France, a shepherd fights to preserve his way of life against the threat of wolves and the challenges of traditional livestock farming. A Shepherd is a poetic documentary that explores the intimate relationship betwe...

  • This Stolen Country of Mine (w/ Fernando Villavicencio)

    Directed by Marc Wiese • Documentary • With Paúl Jarrín Mosquera, Fernando Villavicencio • 2022 • 93 minutes

    Chinese mining in Ecuador’s mountains sets the stage for an epic battle between eco-guerrillas and a corrupt government in an intensely dramatic documentary.

    This Stolen Country of Mine ...

  • Regenerating Life

    Directed by John Feldman • Documentary • With Cynthia Daley, Gail Fuller, Wes Jackson • 2023 • 137 minutes

    Regenerating Life takes an ecological approach to unraveling the climate crisis. The film proposes that it is humankind’s relentless destruction of the natural world that has caused the cli...

  • Conservation (collection)

    33 items

  • Plastics & Pollution (collection)

    18 items

  • Sustainable Communities (collection)

    35 items

  • Water (collection)

    27 items

  • Environmental Justice (collection)

    42 items

    Much like popular movements to dismantle the scourge of racism, the fight for environmental justice is one centered on overcoming systems that accrue privilege, supremacy and economic gain to the powerful while disenfranchising, dehumanizing and externalizing true costs to people of color and the...

  • Thank You for the Rain

    Directed by Julia Dahr and Kisilu Musya • Documentary • 2017 • 87 minutes

    Five years ago Kisilu, a Kenyan farmer, started to use his camera to capture the life of his family, his village and the damages of climate change. When a violent storm throws him and a Norwegian filmmaker together we see ...

  • Solutions

    Directed by Pernille Rose Grønkjær • Documentary • With Steen Rasmussen, Eric Beinhocker, Doyne Farmer • 2021 • 102 minutes

    In the desert of New Mexico, a group of scientists, entrepreneurs and innovators come together with an ambitious goal: to secure the future of humanity by creating a new an...

  • The Elk Forest

    Directed by Ane Helga Lykka • Documentary • 2021 • 57 minutes

    Sigrid has hunted elk for years, but is still not sure if she actually wants to shoot the beautiful animal. She’s hunting with her father, Geir, who is faithfully doing everything he can to facilitate for his daughter’s first kill. Si...

  • Climate Change

    39 items

    The documentaries in OVID’s Climate Change Collection take viewers on a global tour through the effects of planetary warming, from the melting of polar ice caps to the front-line resistance of indigenous communities. Anthropocene, Planetary, Antarctic Edge, and Strait Through the Ice uncover the ...

  • Welcome to Nuclear Land

    Directed by Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 2009 • 74 minutes

    Discover France, Normandy, the most nuclearized region on the planet. With both humor and seriousness, Esther Hoffenberg explores a well-kept secret: nuclear power and the reprocessing of its waste. What does it mean to live with nu...

  • Malintzin 17

    Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky and Mara Polgovsky • Documentary • 2022 • 64 minutes

    Filmed from the unusual vantage-point of a second-floor apartment window, MALINTZIN 17 portrays two parallel expressions of parental care. 

    For seven days and nights filmmaker Eugenio Polgovsky and his five-year-...

  • Food & Agriculture

    46 items