1st Annual Puyallup River Film Festival: a Competition to Save Our Watershed We need your video-making talents!!! With a generous grant from The Russell Family Foundation, the University of Washington Tacoma will host the first ever film festival focused on our own Puyallup River Watershed. We invite all individuals, schools (middle schools, high schools, and colleges/universities) and non-profit organizations located in or working in the watershed to submit 2- to 3-minute videos related to issues affecting the Puyallup River and its tributaries. Any digital format will be accepted, and the more inventive and original the better!!! We will screen all entries in an evening film festival in late October (details to come) open to the public. Winners in each category will be selected by the audience and prizes will be awarded. All entries will be made available to the public to view on a new website being developed to showcase educational materials and outreach efforts in the Puyallup River Watershed. You’ll be famous!!! The idea for this festival comes from the making of UW Tacoma’s documentary, "Water Undone: The Efforts to Save the Puyallup River Watershed", released in 2010 (funded by The Russell Family Foundation and UWT’s Founders Endowment) and viewable online at http://www.uwtv.org/video/series.aspx?id=17393401. The Puyallup River watershed is a major source of freshwater into Puget Sound through Commencement Bay in Tacoma. But it suffers from a multitude of pollution problems, including policies on "land use favoring paving and shingles," as detailed in this documentary from UW Tacoma. The program takes viewers through the interwoven watershed-river system that supplies water for drinking, irrigation, recreation, food, wildlife and the natural beauty of the Northwest. It explains how spreading urbanization threatens the Puget Sound area's water supply and lays out the case for improvement: to clean up Puget Sound, start with the watersheds. However, hour-long documentaries are too long for use in most classrooms, and students and the public want short videos that they can watch on YouTube or on their cell phones! The creators and supporters of Water Undone want to see fresh ideas and different approaches to getting information on watershed issues out to the public, so they are asking you to be the film makers!!! To see an example created by students at Tacoma’s Lincoln High School, go to http://www.tacoma.uw.edu/interdisciplinary-arts-sciences/courses/environmental-studies to view their video, "What is a Watershed?" If you are interested, but do not have access to a video camera, don’t despair! Thanks to our sponsors, we have easy-to-use video cameras you can borrow for filming, and project staff will be happy to work with you on getting started; we will even visit your school to meet with your team! For assistance please email Jim Gawel (jimgawel@uw.edu). To enter your team in the film festival competition, please register at https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/jimgawel/192838 before May 1, 2013. Entries must be delivered on DVD by October 11, 2013, to: Jim Gawel University of Washington Tacoma 1900 Commerce St. Campus Box 358436 Tacoma, WA 98402 We can’t wait to see your work and share it with everyone!!! ---------------------------------------------------------- James E. Gawel, Ph.D. Assoc. Prof. of Environmental Chemistry and Engineering Environmental Science and Studies Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program University of Washington Tacoma 1900 Commerce St Campus Box 358436 Tacoma, WA 98402 Phone: 253-692-5815 E-mail: jimgawel@u.washington.edu URL: www.tacoma.uw.edu/interdisciplinary-arts-sciences/courses/environmental-studies