This year’s Reel Film Experience is going to be one you do not want to miss. The Environmental Center is celebrating their 15th annual Reel Film Experience along with their 25th anniversary at Fort Lewis College.

“This year we are going all out,” Rachel Landis, Coordinator at FLC’s Environmental Center said.  

What is This Event?

“This annual event serves to highlight the Environmental Center’s mission which is two fold; to empower and engage students so that you are graduating with the tools and skills to go on and create environmental and social change, and to actually creating change in the here and now,” Landis said.

On average each year between 250 and 300 people attend this event, Landis said. This year they are hoping it will be even bigger.

This year starts with a collective community march starting at the bottom gate at 4:00 p.m. up the college fonthill road to the community concert hall on November 5th, she said.

“It's not a protest, it's a parade,” she said.

The march will contain street theatre performances, a live marching band, and many participants with banners, Landis said.

Doors open for the films at 5 p.m. at the community concert hall, she said.

The event will consists of two locally produced high school films on climate, the premiere of, The Fierce History of Now: 25 years of the FLC Environmental Center, and concluded with a big feature film, A Time To Choose, she said.

“We highlight some environmental or social justice issue in the region and then connect it back with a regional and direct action people can take here and now,” Landis said.

What is the purpose of the event?

“It’s to highlight that work and tell a different story about student power, it's also to bring the community and campus together,” Landis said. “This year it's really taking this conversation around climate which can be pretty oppressive and turning it into and ‘here is what we all are doing and here is what we can and will do.’”

The Environmental Center wants their students to have their work recognized by the public, she said.  

“Often times we get brushed to the side,” she said. “Our students this last year have contributed over 9,000 hours of time to advancing regional sustainability, our students have volunteered over $120,000 worth of efforts to make that happen.”

History

The Reel Film Experience started out of student desire to find creative ways to inform and engage people with local environmental issues 15 years ago, Landis said.

This is an event that the EC is very proud of and will continue to put on annually, she said.