Film festival to focus on forests

In association with the United Nations Forum on Forests, Forest for People awards, the program will screen five award-winning documentary shorts and feature a different musical act and guest speaker on each evening.

Forest in Focus, an event fusing activism and culture, arts and environmentalism is reportedly the first of its kind for Greenpop.

Forest in Focus will open on Thursday, 6 June, offering a great opportunity for people to join in the global celebration of World Environment Day which falls 5 June, an annual event that is aimed at being the biggest and widest celebrated event for positive environmental action.

The film festival will take place at the Labia Theatre, on 6, 9, 11 June 2013.

All funds raised from Forest in Focus will go towards supporting Greenpop's Trees for Zambia Action Event happening in July 2013.

What Forest in Focus aims to achive

• Raise local awareness on what is happening to our forests, both in Africa and on a global scale, disseminated through the curation of UNFF nominated films from around the world.
  
• To enrich the Cape Town cultural calendar with an integrative curation of arts, education, environmentalism and culture. Inciting a new wave of modern activism through the sharing of information.
  
• Congratulate Greenpop's media partner, Makhulu, for winning the UN Forum on Forests Short Film award for the Africa region, for their film Amazing Grace made during Greenpop's first Trees for Zambia action conference in 2012. (this will be one of the films screened during Forest in Focus).
  
• Inspire more people to take reforestation action in Africa and promote the Trees for Zambia 2013 action conference.
  
• Raise funds for Trees for Zambia 2013.

What to expect

On each evening, Forest in Focus will integrate a musical act and guest speaker into the evening program. The programme has not yet been confirmed, but here is just a taste of things to come:

Thursday, 6 June:

Musical performance by: Kyla & Zolani (of Freshlyground)
Screenings of UNFF Forests for People Short film award winners

Sunday, 9 June:

Musical performance by: Ronan Skillen. He plays a fusion of tabla, percussion and didgeridoo by means of a hybrid percussion kit.
Screenings of UNFF Forests for People Short film award winners

Tuesday, 11 June:

Musical performance by: TouchWood
Screenings of UNFF Forests for People Short film award winners

Digital media activism

Greenpop believes that digital media has a large role to play in re-defining activism and is a great vehicle for facilitating widespread knowledge sharing. With this in mind, Greenpop would like to invite every member of the audience to take the message into their own hands and share the stories from the program with their own networks.

Greenpop asks audience members to bring a USB flash drive to the event, which they will be able to have the evening program loaded onto, so they may host their own mini screenings and disseminate the awareness they've gained as far as it can go.

For more, go to www.greenpop.org, www.facebook.com/GreenpopTreevolution or follow @GreenpopSA on Twitter.