It is with great excitement that the EJ Working Group, in partnership with an amazing team from the JSK Journalism Fellowship program, Earth Systems, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Institute for Diversity in the Arts, Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Students for a Sustainable Stanford, SDSS, and LEDE New Orleans bring you our inaugural 

✨💦Environmental Justice Film Festival! 💦 ✨

Our film festival is an interactive film screening and community engagement series featuring extraordinary films about climate change and racial equity that center the voices, leadership, experiences and solutions of frontline communities. The screenings will be followed by panels with filmmakers in conversation with community leaders at Stanford and beyond. The event will also include art-making activities connected to the movies, music, and some good food.

Screenings include:

Manzanar, Diverted; When Water Becomes Dust.
Feb 29, 2024, 5:30pm

At the foot of the majestic snow-capped Sierras, Manzanar, the WWII concentration camp, becomes the confluence for memories of Payahuunadü, the now-parched “land of flowing water.” Intergenerational women from Native American, Japanese American and rancher communities form an unexpected alliance to defend their land and water from Los Angeles. A co-production of the Center for Asian American Media and Vision Maker Media. A co-presentation with the Center for Asian American Media.

Katrina Babies
April 3, 5:30pm

From first-time filmmaker and New Orleans native Edward Buckles, Jr., Katrina Babies offers an intimate look at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and its impact on the youth of New Orleans.
​Katrina Babies details the close-knit families and vibrant communities of New Orleans whose lives were uprooted by the 2005 disaster. These American children who were airlifted out of the rising waters, evacuated from their homes to refugee-like centers, or placed in makeshift, temporary living situations, have been neglected. As families were tasked with reintegrating into new communities, having experienced loss, displacement, and lack of support from government officials, the children were left to process their trauma in a wounded, fractured city.

Above Water
April 25, 5:30pm

​From one end of the globe to the other, water is becoming increasingly scarce. For a billion people, access to safe drinking water is almost nonexistent—a crisis with huge consequences. As a result, millions of families spend their lives trying to get access to this basic necessity. Houlaye, 12 years old, lives in a village in Tatis, Niger, and walks several kilometers every day to fetch water. It is abundant during the rainy season, but in short supply during the dry season. However, a source exists just 200 meters below the ground. When Houlaye’s aunt Suri convinces an NGO to build a well in the village, it brings the promise of renewal for those men and women who, unknowingly, had been walking on water all their lives.

Maquilapolis
May 23, 5pm

Carmen works the graveyard shift in one of Tijuana’s maquiladoras, the multinationally-owned factories that came to Mexico for its cheap labor.  After making television components all night, Carmen comes home to a shack she built out of recycled garage doors, in a neighborhood with no sewage lines or electricity.  She suffers from kidney damage and lead poisoning from her years of exposure to toxic chemicals.  She earns six dollars a day.  But Carmen is not a victim.  She is a dynamic young woman, busy making a life for herself and her children.  
As Carmen and a million other maquiladora workers produce televisions, electrical cables, toys, clothes, batteries and IV tubes, they weave the very fabric of life for consumer nations.  They also confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos -- life on the frontier of the global economy.  In MAQUILAPOLIS, Carmen and her colleague Lourdes reach beyond the daily struggle for survival to organize for change:  Carmen takes a major television manufacturer to task for violating her labor rights.  Lourdes pressures the government to clean up a toxic waste dump left behind by a departing factory. 
As they work for change, the world changes too:  a global economic crisis and the availability of cheaper labor in China begin to pull the factories away from Tijuana, leaving Carmen, Lourdes and their colleagues with an uncertain future.