The non-profit Chattahoochee Riverkeeper is offering its sixth annual Wild & Scenic Film Festival in a virtual format this year.
The event will be streamed entirely online, beginning at 7 p.m. on Thursday June 18, with access to entries available until June 23 at midnight.
Featured films will be family-friendly and cover a wide variety of topics relating to nature- including community activism, conservation and agriculture.
“There are about seventeen films that are going to be shown in our film festival this year,” said Mallory Pendleton, Headwaters Outreach Manager for CRK. “There’s a lot of different storylines; they all have the same goal which is to inspire awareness to anything that’s going on [in nature].”
Pendleton said the festival will include a few videos filmed locally, as well.
This year’s festival serves several purposes that furthers the mission of the CRK, which is primarily to educate on and protect the water quality of the Chattahoochee River.
“The films to a pretty good job of bringing to light some of the type of issues that an organization like Chattahoochee Riverkeeper works on,” said Dale Caldwell, Headwaters Director for CRK. “Such as pollution, political challenges, even corruption.”
Funds collected from the event will go toward CRK’s Clean Lanier Equation initiative, which works to prevent pollution in and raise awareness for the Lake Lanier watershed.
While Caldwell said that he will miss seeing attendees in person at the festival, he is appreciative of the fact that a virtual event can reach a larger amount of people.
“This is a great opportunity to get this local event out, to expand it to further places for people to see what we’re doing here in Gainesville,” said Caldwell. “And maybe these people will appreciate what they see and gather with us next time we’re able to do this in person.”
Tickets for the screening are $12 per household and include an annual membership to CRK. For each ticket sold, $1 will be donated to the North Georgia Community Foundation’s COVID-19 Relief Fund.
Tickets are available for purchase at chattahoochee.org/wildscenic or by texting ‘WSFF’ to 41444. Tickets can also be gifted to another household by emailing Mallory at [email protected]
