OCPS Update

Six American University students study in Cuba during fall semester 2011 and return to the United States profoundly changed.

Randall Wade is an avant-garde Docu-Reality filmmaker without a crew. Armed with only a camera, a tripod and iMovie, one man set out to collect extraordinary stories that shatter stereotypes and capture the pure essence of the human spirit; through the achievements of unknown heroes with a 'Just Don't Quit' attitude. justdontquit.com, is the true story of an ordinary person, on a life-altering journey of self-discovery and sacrifice trying to help others make sense of real-life events and pursue their dreams.

This 47-minute documentary examines the need for integration of environmental, economic, and social action for the purpose of creating a future that is green, profitable, fair, and 'glocal'. It calls for a new societal operating system that is grounded in the life of community and dedicated to the health and resilience of people, markets, and ecosystems. Exploring both the promise and limitations of sustainability in the twenty-first century, the filmmaker, Dr. Monty Hempel, a national leader in sustainability thought and practice, offers a personal and professional assessment of what is needed to replace the old operating system of industrial growth that has given rise to a series of interlocking crises in finance, energy, food, water, poverty, biodiversity, climate disruption, and population growth.

Narrator Holter Graham, voice for HBO, tells the story of Glen Canyon in this 26-minute film based on the book Resurrection by Annette McGivney with photography by James Kay. By combining historical video clips of Glen Canyon, before the dam, along with more than 100 stunning images from the book, this inspirational new film showcases the remarkable reemerging canyons of Glen while providing a hopeful message for the future of Western water resources and rivers.

A crew of 4 individuals, dropped 100s of miles north of the nearest road, travel the an Arctic river, from its headwaters to the Arctic Ocean, filming as they go. The non-narrated film focuses on the landscape itself.

Portraits on the Malecon explores the social uses of Havana, Cuba's 'urban sofa,' a 7-kilometer long wall called the 'malecon' (seawall), where everything one does on a sofa at night or day, is done in public, beside the sea, beneath the sky, in the open air, where the natural and urban environment meet.