By: Lauren Patetta
WASHINGTON — Professor and filmmaker Chris Palmer hosted an event at American University to present his thoughts on environmentalism in cinema and announce the winners of the eco-comedy video contest last night.
Dubbed “An Evening with Chris Palmer,” the function was part of D.C.’s Environmental Film Festival, a two-week long event that showcased the newest environmental documentaries to the public. Many of the movies were premiered at the festival, some even winning awards.
Palmer focused his talk on a discussion of environmental and conservationist themes as depicted in fictional films rather than documentaries (which the festival traditionally focuses on). He explained his picks for the top five narrative movies that convey environmentalist themes, then proceeded to take questions and comments from the audience.
“I really loved hearing about Professor Palmer’s picks for the best fictional environmental films,” said freshman and international relations major Larissa Breit-Nicholson, who attended the event. “It was a really interesting take on environmentalism. We tend to think of this as an issue only in documentaries like the ones presented in the rest of the festival, but Palmer made us see things in a different way.”
After presenting his film picks, Palmer showed the videos of the eco-comedy contest finalists and winners. The competition was meant to introduce comedy into documentary filmmaking, and accepted entries from people worldwide. The winners of the contest — Theodore Blossom and Robbie Price — could not attend the event, but recorded a video thanking everyone for the award. The Nature Conservancy, which co-sponsored the contest with AU’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking, then announced the Viewer’s Choice award winner, Stephanie Brown.
This article was written for my Spring 2018 Writing for Communications class
Lauren Patetta 
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