Santo Domingo – Last Friday, June 7, the Dominican Republic Environmental Film Festival (DREFF) presented a screening of the documentary Revolution to observe World Environment Day. The event, held together with the Ibero-American University (UNIBE) to close its Environment Week, was hosted by DREFF’s Environmental Film Screenings, an initiative of Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (GFDD).
Revolution (2012) is an award-winning Canadian documentary directed by the late documentalist Rob Stewart following his hit debut Sharkwater. Revolution portrays 3.5 billion years of evolution and the initiatives under way to halt the current environmental crisis. Stewart, a photojournalist and filmmaker who was passionate about protecting the natural world, died in 2017 at age 37 in scuba diving accident in Florida as he worked on his next movie.
This documentary was selected for the closing event of UNIBE’s Environment Week, held in the university auditorium. The activity was led by Dr. Loraine Amell, Dean of International and Institutional Affairs at UNIBE, and Reydi Moreta of DREFF/GFDD, and drew an attendance of 55 students from the university and St. Michael’s School, as well as other members of the university community. Also in attendance was Dr. Milagros Rodríguez, to whom both the screening and UNIBE’s Environment Week itself were dedicated, for her service and professional collaborations to the Dominican environment. Dr. Rodríguez is also a member of the DREFF Advisory Committee.
After the screening, Sardis Medrano, an expert in biodiversity and forest ecology and a professor at UNIBE, led a discussion with the students on the topics of ocean degradation and environmental crisis that appeared in the documentary. Revolution is the first feature-length film to portray the phenomenon of ocean acidification and its effects on all global ecosystems.
DREFF was inaugurated in 2011 as a key initiative of GFDD to provide residents of the Dominican Republic with a forum for learning, awareness-raising, and debate on the environment and sustainable development, while highlighting the natural beauty of the Dominican Republic. Throughout the year, DREFF organizes its Environmental Screenings to share the films and to extend the impact of its programming to new audiences.
To find out more about GFDD and its initiatives, visit www.globalfoundationdd.org
