Old Town Center for the Arts ~ Cottonwood, AZ

The Old Town Center for the Arts ~ Cottonwood, AZ

Earth Day Celebration at OTCA
‘Earth Days’ – the film, music and discussion

Thursday, April 22, 7:00PM
Admission FREE
donations for Sustainable Arizona

‘Earth Days’ Film Looks Back at Environmental Movement

The celebration of Earth Day is a call to action. Can you remember when everyone in America was not “Going Green.” Come enjoy a special film, music and discussion about the beginning of the environmental movement as Sustainable Arizona presents ‘Earth Days’ at Old Town Center for the Arts in Cottonwood, on Thursday, April 22, at 7:00 PM. Author-poet James Bishop, and environmental advocate since the 1960’s, will be a special guest. Mr. Bishop wrote the cover story for Newsweek Magazine on the first Earth Day in 1970 and worked in Washington for several presidential administrations. The event is part of the “Spice of Life” series at OTCA and admission is free, with donations accepted for Sustainable Arizona, a non-profit 501 C3 organization.

Visually stunning, vastly entertaining and awe-inspiring the film, Earth Days, looks back to the dawn and development of the modern environmental movement, from its post-war rustlings in the 1950s and the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s incendiary bestseller Silent Spring, to the first wildly successful 1970 Earth Day celebration and the subsequent firestorm of political action.

Earth Days’ secret weapon is a one-two punch of personal testimony and rare archival media. The extraordinary stories of the era’s pioneers, among them Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; biologist/Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich; Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand; Apollo Nine astronaut Rusty Schweickart; and renewable energy pioneer Hunter Lovins are beautifully illustrated with an incredible array of footage from candy-colored Eisenhower-era tableaux to classic tear-jerking 1970’s anti-litterbug PSA’s. Directed by acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone (Oswald's Ghost, Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst) Earth Days is both a poetic meditation on humanity's complex relationship with nature and an engaging history of the revolutionary achievements, and missed opportunities, of groundbreaking eco-activism.

As a prelude to the film, musicians Gary Simpkins and friends will present several ‘eco-songs’ in the tradition of the 1970’s ‘environmental’ hymns and protest songs.

Following the film John Neville, president of Sustainable Arizona - an original Earth Day guy, active then and now, will moderate a lively discussion of the environmental movement, sustainability and what it all means for us in the Verde Valley.

The Earth Days film is the first in a series of ‘eco-films’ at OTCA.

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James Bishop

John Neville

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