YERTy Updates Galore!
Dear YERTians,
There's plenty brewing in the world of YERT, and we're delighted to share the news...
- YERT wins Audience Award at the 2011 Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY)
- Help us Build Buzz for YERT Screenings at deadCENTER Film Fest Next Week
- Ramping up for Film Festival Madness (we hope!)
- Plan a Screening of Your Own!
- YERT Featured in Huffington Post + Other Press
YERT wins Audience Award at the 2011 Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY)
If you're following our Facebook Fan Page or our Blog, you've already heard the news, but if you just don't have time, here's the big news: After a fantastic world premiere at EFFY 2011 - complete with packed house, laughter, tears, two standing ovations, and friends and family all around - we're proud to announce that the YERT film won the Audience Award at the festival - in a tie with Oscar-nominated "Waste Land"!! Read all about it HERE.
Help us Build Buzz for YERT Screenings at deadCENTER Film Fest Next Week
We're very excited to kick off YERT's major festival run on 6/9 and 6/11 at the 11th Annual deadCENTER Film Festival - one of MovieMaker Magazine's "Top 20 Coolest Film Festivals in the World" - and we need YOUR support (in person OR remotely from distant lands)! Even if you're nowhere near Oklahoma, you can still help us easily, painlessly, and hugely - simply click on our festival link here and click "Like". We get points for visits and "Likes," so please head on over! And if you ARE in Oklahoma, or know somebody who is, tell them to stop by and see the film, and even better, stop by the "Meet and Greet" event with Mark in Oklahoma City on Friday, 6/10 at 4pm, at Elemental Coffee (815 N. Hudson Ave., Oklahoma City, OK). And finally, a giant THANK YOU to all the sustainability groups and supporters who are helping get the word out in Oklahoma City: The deadCENTER staff and volunteers, Transition OKC, Sustainable OKC, Fresh Greens Blog, and Cimarron Group of the Sierra Club.
Ramping up for Film Festival Madness (we hope!)
We've applied to 41 film festivals so far, and have been accepted by two and rejected by two-- an awesome average for festivals. We hope to keep it up! If you know of any festivals that you think we should apply to, now is the time. By the looks of the schedule, there is a surge of festivals peaking in October, so watch for us near you then-- and if we don't make it to your location by November, plan one of your own! And that leads us to the next item...
Plan a Screening of Your Own!
We don't have any major distributors chomping at the bit to help us distribute the YERT film, but we feel that there is enough grass-roots support for our up-beat environmental story that we can do this on our own! It is very easy to do. All we need is for everybody on this list to host or inspire 5 screenings. Simply visit our Screening page at http://yert.com/screenings.php and sign up via the form there. On that same page you'll also see a short but quickly growing schedule of our upcoming screenings. (By the way, if you know of a willing distributor, send them our way! ;-)
YERT Featured in Huffington Post + Other Press
We recently caught up with Jeff Biggers and he wrote a great interview about the YERT film and project on the Huffington Post! You can check out the article here, and you can check out the latest press and reviews about the film on our press page here. Here's a little snippet or two from the Huffington Post article:
Years in the making, YERT is a hilarious, powerful and often poignant chronicle of the year-long journey of three filmmakers, engineers and acclaimed Off Broadway performers - Julie Dingman Evans, Mark Dixon and Ben Evans - to explore breakthrough approaches, from the bizarre to the mind-blowing, for environmental sustainability in all 50 states.
BEN: It's really a roadmap past clean energy toward LOW energy. . .and a sustainable, sane civilization based on how natural systems work. Clean energy is critically important, but it needs to take place in the context of powering down and maturing out of our extractive relationship with the planet into a mutually beneficial regenerative, restorative one. Ultimately, it's about stopping deficit spending. . .of all kinds.
Please forward as much as you're able- we need to get the word out about this film!
And that's all for this latest edition of the YERT newsletter. Keep in touch, join the conversation on Facebook, and we'll see you again soon!
Cheers,
Ben, Mark, and Julie
team@yert.com
"I laughed (a lot), learned (loads), admired (lots of cool projects), and cried (at the ...beautiful ending)." -Lori Hanemann, AK
"I am a member of GRAC = Grass Roots Action Club and tonight some of the members came out to see your film, and we were absolutely blown away. First, may I say that the music that was chosen for the film was perfect, so perfect, in fact, that I wanted to buy the soundtrack to your film right after it was over." -Jessica Teixeira, West Haven High School, CT
". . .the world premiere of "YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip" had us feeling just as hopeful and motivated as "Bag It." . . .the narrators were charismatic, the story was creative and well developed, and the environmental issues were well presented. "YERT" covered a wide range of topics and had a bit of something for everyone." -Kari Post, SustainableFocus.org
Ben, Julie, and Mark at the World Premiere of YERT at the Environmental Film Festival at Yale.
Photo by Rich Press.