SNHF Interns and WITNESS Win Honors

Videos produced by Science and Natural History Filmmaking (SNHF) students as part of a special production internship program supporting a legal approach toaddress human-induced climate change have received multiple international honors. Christi Cooper-Kuhn, Kaitie Lose-Gilbertson, Deia Schlosberg, and Sean Solwiej, all MFA in SNHF students, spent part of the last academic year producing videos in Montana, Alaska, Arizona, California and five other states in support of the TRUST Campaign led by WITNESS, an international human rights organization, Our Children's Trust, a nonprofit focused on protecting earth's natural systems for current and future generations, and iMatter, a youth-led campaign of the nonprofit group Kids vs Global Warming.

The national video effort is headed by MFA alumnae Kelly Matheson (MFA, 2009), who co-produced the videos with the students. Kelly is the Program Manager for the Americas for WITNESS, which was founded by rock star Peter Gabriel. She organized the special internship with the cooperation of MFA Program Head Professor Dennis Aig. Each video tells the story of a young person whose life has already been changed by the effects of climate change. Along with informing a general audience about these individuals' respective experiences with the environment, the videos also will be used in the campaign's legal cases and to reach key decision makers at every level of government.

At the 2012 International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, the TRUST: Montana video won the Best Made in Montana award and TRUST: Alaska won the Non-Broadcast Award.

TRUST: Alaska received an additional honor when it was selected as a finalist film and was nominated for a Panda Award at the Wildscreen Festival. Winners will be announced at the festival in Bristol, United Kingdom, in October. The video was selected from among 491 films entered from 46 countries.

Additional videos from the campaign will be released as they are completed.

For more information about WITNESS, Our Children's Trust, iMatter and the TRUST Campaign, please go to http://www.witness.org/campaigns/partners/imatter. For information about the International Wildlife Film Festival, please go to http://wildlifefilms.org. To learn more about the Wildscreen Festival, please visit http://www.wildscreen.org.uk. The current and future videos will be available at the SNHF TERRA site, http://www.lifeonterra.com.