Amazing Earthfest

by Rich Csenge

Award winning documentary films are an integral part of Kanab, Utah’s annual Amazing Earthfest, southern Utah’s festival of learning discovery, arts and adventure. Selected films offer insights into issues of regional and planetary importance currently affecting human society and the natural world as well as exploring directions and concepts in the physical, neurological and social sciences. Amazing Earthfest offers its documentaries free to those attending the festival. Registration is required to obtain the links to view each film from the comfort of home over Vimeo. Five titles are available on demand May 8 through May 14, 2022, as part of Kanab’s 16th annual celebration of land and life on the Colorado Plateau. Visit www.Amazing Earthfest.org/events to obtain your links. Here’s a preview.

Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness opens as a science film but emerges well beyond the explicable, ultimately leading the viewer on a voyage upon the ocean of consciousness. For an hour and a half, viewers can follow six brilliant researchers approaching the greatest of all mysteries from radically different perspectives to arrive at new insights, and some which have been integral to Indigenous knowledge for millennia.

In No Time to Waste: the Urgent Mission of Betty Reid Soskin, viewers can meet the inspired and legendary National Park Service ranger whose efforts have changed the way the Park Service conveys the knowledge and reality of American history through the National Park system. Betty selflessly shared her unique understanding and perspectives until she retired in 2021 at the wise age of 100!

The film Entangled chronicles the efforts to protect North American right whales from extinction, the impacts of those efforts on the lobster industry, and how the National Marine Fisheries Service has struggled to balance the vying interests of both. Viewers will also learn how climate change is accelerating a collision between one of the world’s most endangered species, North America’s most valuable fishery, and the federal agency mandated to protect both.

The Third Harmony: Nonviolence and the New Story of Human Nature explores the greatest overlooked resource in human experience. By revealing the convergence of modern science and the world’s great wisdom traditions, this film illuminates the important role that nonviolence plays in the wider struggle to develop a ‘new story’ of human nature contrary to the “old story” of scarcity, competition and violence. The universe is conscious and purposeful; we are spiritual beings, and cooperation and collaboration are natural ways of interacting.

The Divided Brain is a pioneering exploration of the differences between the brain’s right and left hemispheres and their effects on society, history, and culture. Learn why a growing imbalance in our emphasis on cultivating these regions of the brain appears to be making humanity increasingly unable to grapple with the critical economic, environmental and social issues that shape our very future as a species.

While there is no charge to attend the annual Amazing Earthfest or to view the documentary film events of the festival, donations to the 501c3 nonprofit organization are most graciously appreciated. Hope to see you there!