The Louisville premiere of the award winning feature docu-comedy YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip will be at Louisville Science Center on July 28th and is sponsored by The Louisville Film Society, The Green Building, and The Louisville Science Center. The 7 pm screening is already filled to capacity, but tickets to the 9:15 pm screening can be reserved by clicking here. A donation of any amount is requested.
The docu-comedy tied with the Oscar-nominated film Waste Land for the audience award at the Environmental Film Festival at Yale. It features the talents of many Louisvillians including director/co-producer Ben Evans, Julie Evans, co-producer Gill Holland, co-editor/co-producer Scott Irick, musicians Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore, and animator Eric Stemen in addition to a long list of local donors, transcribers and supporters.This film has been four years in the making and covers a year long road trip taken by three friends on an environmental mission.
The goal of the road trip was to take a year-long eco-expedition through all 50 United States to explore America's unique approach to sustainability. According to the YERT web site, the filmmakers believed that Americans want to do the right thing but don't want to look strange or don't have the time to explore all the options.
The web site claims, "That's where the YERT team comes in." They put together 60 short films as they shamelessly bathe themselves in the best (and weirdest) of America's ecological progress with a mix of outrageous antics, provocative examples, and thoughtful reporting.
They made their trip in a 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid and adopted some road rules to keep things interesting. They agreed to create less than one shoebox of garbage each month (including recyclables);they agreed to never turn on an incanescent light (except car lights); they agreed to use approximately 25 gallons of water per person per day.
The YERT web site has a variety of short films and check in videos that allow you to track how they did. The road trip was completed on July 4, 2008.
