Event

FOCUS EARTH PRESENTS "CHASING CORAL" MOVIE AND PANEL DISCUSSION

Focus Earth, a feature of the Ojai Film Festival, in conjunction with the Ojai Land Conservancy and the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy presents the film, "Chasing Coral" an exploration of coral reefs and climate change. Chasing Coral, winner of the Audience Award for documentary at Sundance, brilliantly shows the coral beds of the worlds oceans in all their wavy phosphorescent delicacy and flesh-bulb splendor. Theyre like flowers, brains, suction cups, and tubular orifices. A lot of them come in sparkly psychedelic colors that look too wild to fit in a rainbow.
Then the same coral beds are viewed after theyve expired, often due to the effect called bleaching: vast stretches of stone-gray fossil, the former tentacles reaching up like dead fingers. Anyone who has been snorkeling has probably encountered coral graveyards like these, but only now does it occur to you that youre seeing not undersea rock formations but skeletons. Corpses. Corals may have the placidity of plants, but in fact theyre self-feeding animals. They are literally the squishy bedrock of life.

A panel discussion of experts will follow the screening.