This block of short docs includes the following 5 films -

1.

FORGOTTEN PRAIRIE: Join Chris & Connie from The Big Doer, plus photographers Rob Pohl (large format film) and Byron Robb... as they venture into the bitter cold, the ghost towns near the Alberta/Saskatchewan border & the incredible people connected to them. Forgotten Prairie takes the viewer on a cinematographic adventure with Team BIGDoer & friends to research and create stories among forgotten Saskatchewan ghost towns. This story recreates the past partly through the lens of Rob Pohl’s view camera, photographic technology from the turn of the last century when the towns were bustling. “The past makes us what we are & what we are is our past."

Directed by: Rueben Tschetter from Red Deer

Film Category: Short Documentary

Genre: Documentary

Country/Production location: Canada

2.

THE ARCTIC CIRCUS: a film that investigates the controversial tourism industry of Churchill, Manitoba. Billed as the 'polar bear capital of the world', Churchill has become a veritable media frenzy caught between the intersection of economy and environmentalism.

The film explores the conflict between those locals who facilitate the tourism industry to share the image of an iconic animal and the enforcement that opposes its effects on their behavior. Offering perspectives on how both sides are trying to preserve the species and the extreme ends to which they'll go to do it on their own terms.

Directed by: Connor Johnstone

Film Category: Short Documentary

Genre: Environment/Wildlife

Country/Production location: Canada

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/205391105

3. Toddy

Director: Ranjit Mullakady | 10:00 | Canada/India | 2016 | Documentary
A look into the harvesting of coconut sap and turning it into marketable toddy in South India.

4. Orphans Un-Wanted

Director: Xavier Cattarinich | 9:57 | Canada | 2017 | Documentary
Between 2010 and 2015, Alberta Fish and Wildlife officers euthanized twenty-four orphaned bear cubs.
Three of the cubs put down during that period were grizzlies, which are a threatened species in Alberta.
This short documentary explores the Cochrane Ecological Institute's experience with orphaned bears, and

CEI President Clio Smeeton's perspective on the Government of Alberta's policy forbidding the rehabilita-
tion of orphaned bear cubs.

5. Tupendo

Director: Robert Steiner | 25:30 | Switzerland | 2016 | Documentary

Upon their first ascent of the Tupendeo in the Kashmir region of India’s Himalaya in 2015, Stephan Siegrist
and Thomas Senf encounter a mystery. They find a rope and an abseil device but the tracks disappear just
short of the summit. The locals vaguely remember there being a tragic accident. A year later it becomes clear that the person behind the story is the British scientist Jonathan Bamber, whose leg was almost completely severed by rock fall just short of the summit in 1992. He lay there waiting for many days on the

mountain for either his rescue or certain death.