The 2023 American Conservation Film Festival (ACFF) will light up the screen at the intimate and historic Shepherdstown Opera House for three days, (March 10, 11 & 12 — Fri, Sat & Sun) and will spotlight short films that are 40 minutes or less. From among the 300 films submitted from 44 countries, the ACFF selection committee has chosen 12 — including animation, narrative, and documentary films.
In addition to the shorts, ACFF is excited to present a few feature films, including Path of the Panther (Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2022 Naples International Film Festival) and All That Breathes (winner of the Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, winner of the Grand Jury Prize in World Cinema Documentary at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and currently short-listed for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature Film).
The festival will begin Friday evening, March 10 with a reception at Evolve in Shepherdstown (106 W German Street). Additional events will be held at Evolve throughout the weekend featuring West Virginia artists, environmental organizations, leaders, and entrepreneurs. Following the Friday reception, guests can walk over to the Shepherdstown Opera House for a screening of Path of the Panther at 7 pm. Saturday morning, March 11, the festival continues with a pay-what-you-can/donation screening of National Geographic’s Super/Natural, and then the blocks of festival-selected shorts will run on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Sunday evening, March 12, the festival will conclude with a viewing of All That Breathes at 4:30 pm followed by a dinner and discussion at the Shepherdstown Community Club (102 West German St) featuring Indian-inspired cuisine.
Tickets are $15 per screening and will go on sale February 1st. Tickets to the community dinner on March 12th are $25. Details at ConservationFilmFest.org.
About The Festival
The American Conservation Film Festival is a 501(c)3 non-profit with a mission to use the power of film to engage, inform, and inspire audiences to conserve our natural world. In addition to the annual film festival in Shepherdstown, ACFF presents festival selections at venues and in communities around the region, along with hosting student filmmaking workshops and youth-oriented, interactive programming. ACFF considers submitted non-fiction and fiction films, provided the theme is driven by environmental or cultural conservation. Of special interest to the selection committee are the myriad ways humans interact with wildlife and wild places, issues driven by natural resource conservation, humans as part of the environment, living in a continuum of cultural tradition, and how young people encounter and understand nature.
By Staff Contributor