We are pleased to announce our newest collaboration: Marrow of the Mountain, a film directed by Dylan Stirewalt and Solange Yepez.
Mega-mining has come to Ecuador. In 2017, multinational mining companies bought the rights to huge swaths of the country, leaving Ecuador’s most sensitive and biodiverse habitats at the mercy of international mining interests. This happened suddenly, and without public knowledge or consent; most of these sales are in the mineral-rich and endangered Chocó Rainforest. Told in the voices of three women, we witness the deep impact of extractive industry on Ecuadorian lives, as they struggle to protect their families and communities whilst the land is being sold out from under their feet.
Machelle and I (Jerry Hartman) have been consulting with a project in Equador. The central conflict is extraction industries who have been given exploratory mineral rights that also overlap with the Los Cedros Reserve that the government also set aside for ecological protection. The current project is a conservation trip where scientists will be doing research and gathering data to show the biodiversity of the region as part of a National Geographic Explorer Grant. The grant had “raising awareness” as one part of the outcomes of the trip. One of the team members, Dan Thomas (who works at Whitman College) saw our poster about our work in Suriname, and approached us about working with the media team on their project. We have been consulting on ideas and also about how to possibly use part of the community directed filmmaking process. They are very interested in working with indigenous in the area. We are not planning on traveling at this point, but are working with a documentary filmmaker Dylan Stirewalt who lives in Oregon. Also, Clayton Kruse, a senior Film, TV, Media major at Walla Walla University is also going on the trip as part of his senior project. More on this project as it develops. This project has been voted on by the Eclectic Reel board of directors and is an official project of our non-profit.
I’ve been recommending these to my students and I thought I’d share them here as well. I have used the following apps and recommend them. Or my friends in filmmaking have used them and recommend them.
Remember: An app does not do the work or make decisions. That’s up to you!
