A visit by environmentalist and bestselling author Bill McKibben kicks off this week's Making It Home Film Festival, April 16-18 at the Urban Ecology Center, 1500 E. Park Pl., on Milwaukee's East Side.
Admission to the festival, including the McKibben event -- which takes place Friday, April 16 at 7 p.m. -- is free.
The Milwaukee event is one of four around Wisconsin in March and April. Baraboo, Dodgeville and the Chequamegon Bay area are hosting their own versions of the event.
"Sometimes it feels like we live in silos," says statewide festival coordinator Jessica Becker, "spending much of our time with people who think and live just like we do. But the truth is, the best way to ensure that our community thrives in the future is to find ways to talk with, and learn from, all of our neighbors."
The festival will screen seven films from the U.S. -- one is a U.S./Bolivian production -- that show man's ties with the Earth.
"Ghost Bird," for example, is a feature-length documentary about an extinct woodpecker and its ties to a small Arkansas town hoping to change its destiny.
"Men of the Lake" is the story of a 4,000-year-old Bolivian town that is threatened with extinction.
"What's On Your Plate?" is the story of two 11-year-old African-American girls who explore their place in the food chain.
One of the local organizers, T.J. Fackelman, an active member of Milwaukee's film community, says the event is more than simply a film festival.
"(It) helps strengthen the Milwaukee community because the festival includes more than just films," says Fackelman, who is program coordinator for Milwaukee Film.
"The discussions and community involvement opportunities included in the schedule are just as vital and our community real and substantial ways to make contributions."
The McKibben appearance is also a key facet of the weekend.
McKibben has long been a loud voice of American environmentalism and his latest book, "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," out in hardcover from Times Books, argues that it's too late to go back. Regardless of the changes we make to our lifestyles and our carbon emissions now, we can't stop the series of expected and unexpected results of our thirst for oil.
"I've been fighting hard to stop climate change since I published the first book on the topic, 'The End of Nature,' in 1989," writes McKibben in an open letter to readers.
"In the past two years I've led the largest global grassroots campaign to force real action. This work is hugely necessary -- without it climate change will reach levels of complete chaos.
"But already we've passed the point where we can avoid serious change, and with that comes the need for a real rethinking of how we're going to live on this planet."
Whether or not you agree with his bold opinions, expect McKibben's talk to be an explosive and important one.
The complete Making It Home Festival schedule and film details are at MakingWisconsinHome.org.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
