Jeff Saunders

Twin Cities filmmaker Sergio M. Rapu sets his gaze on his homeland in Eating Up Easter, where the Rapanui community faces an environmental collapse due to overwhelming tourism and industrial progress. Rapu himself serves as a narrator, describing to his son the depth of Easter Island's plight and the dilemma of the people who live there. Struggling to keep up with a land that refuses to slow down, the film features other locals making the best of an impossible situation: an ecologist who attempts to temper the rising waste crisis that affects both the island and the shores that surround it, a pair of musicians trying to establish a free music school that may help to preserve cultural traditions, and finally, Rapu's father, the island's former Governor, who is caught between responsibility to generations of culture and the ever-growing demands of industry.

In 2010 David Crowley, an Iraq veteran, aspiring filmmaker and charismatic up-and-coming voice in fringe politics, began production on his film Gray State. Set in a dystopian near-future where civil liberties are trampled by an unrestrained federal government, the film’s crowd funded trailer was enthusiastically received by the burgeoning online community of libertarians, Tea Party activists and members of the nascent alt-right. In January of 2015, Crowley was found dead with his family in their suburban Minnesota home. Their shocking deaths quickly become a cause célèbre for conspiracy theorists who speculate that Crowley was assassinated by a shadowy government concerned about a film and filmmaker that was getting too close to the truth about their aims.

After 40 years of protection, Grey wolves were recently de-listed federally from endangered species act and their fate was handed over to state legislatures. What ensued was a 'push to hunt' in wolf country across the United States. Filmmaker Julia Huffman travels to Minnesota and into wolf country to pursue the deep and intrinsic value of brother wolf and our forgotten promise to him.