EcoFilm Festival

Beaver nibbling. | Photo courtesy of Portland Ecofilm Festival

The Portland EcoFilm Festival is the premier environmental film festival in the Pacific Northwest, showcasing films about nature, the environment, outdoor pursuits and eco-conscious living.  The organizers host a four-day festival each fall, a three-day festival each spring around Earth Day, and year-round programming.

The Portland EcoFilm Festival is a program of The Hollywood Theatre, Portland's historic non-profit art house cinema. The festival's mission is to showcase the very best environmental films, help filmmakers by building support for newly released films, and use the art of cinema to help inspire environmental advocacy.

The 2018 Portland EcoFilm Festival kicks off on Thursday, Sept. 27, from 7 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. at the Hollywood Theater (4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd.). The event is sponsored by KBOO Community Radio, Caravan, and Oregon Wild. 

The Opening Night and Party features the Pacific Northwest premiere of the film, The Beaver Believers (directed by Sarah Koenigsberg). The evening will honor the 50th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Purchase your tickets here.

The Beaver Believers tells the story of an unlikely cadre of activists - a biologist, a hydrologist, a botanist, an ecologist, a psychologist, and a hairdresser - who share a common vision: restoring the North American Beaver, that most industrious, ingenious engineer, to the watersheds of the American West.

As a keystone species, beaver enrich their ecosystems, creating the biodiversity, complexity, and resiliency that watersheds need to absorb the impacts of climate change. This film encourages us to embrace a new paradigm for managing our western lands, one that seeks to partner with the natural world rather than overpower it.