Progressive Film Hour - Emily Driscoll - 10/14/14

This week's featured films are by the same filmmaker, Emily Driscoll, who will be part of the Round Table. Emily is a science video director/producer and the founder of BonSci Films, a production company specializing in science and art documentaries. Her films about invasive species, restoring wild oysters to New York Harbor, the threats of microplastics, and preserving fireflies and darkness in the environment, have screened internationally at museums, universities and film fests, and have aired on PBS stations in the U.S.. Emily teaches science video production at New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and received her master's degree from the same program in 2007. She has also produced short videos for Science Friday, Audubon Magazine and NBC Universal.

The films discussed are Shell-Shocked, Saving Oysters to Save Ourselves and two shorter films, The Invisible Ocean, about what is happening to plankton, the beginning of our food chain and Hutaru, about the disappearance of lightning bugs aka fireflies from our planet.

In Shell-Shocked, Saving Oysters to Save Ourselves follows efforts to prevent the extinction of wild oyster reefs, which keep our oceans healthy by filtering water and engineering ecosystems. Today, because of overfishing and pollution, wild oyster reefs have been declared 'the most severely impacted marine habitat on Earth' and no longer play a role in their ecosystems. Now scientists, government officials, artists and environmentalists are fighting to bring oysters back to the former oyster capital of the world - New York Harbor.

The Invisible Ocean, follows NYC sci-artist Mara Haseltine as she creates a sculpture to reveal a microscopic threat beneath the surface of the ocean. During a Tara Oceans expedition to study the health of the oceans, Haseltine finds an unsettling presence in samples of plankton she collected. The discovery inspires her to create a sculpture that shows that the microscopic ocean world affects all life on Earth.

Brilliant Darkness: Hotaru in the Night is an exploration of firefly conservation efforts in Japan and the US. The film considers the challenges, implications and significance of night and its crucial role in animal biology and life cycles.