Washington Environmetal Film Festival
The film The Innside Story: The Green River from the Alps was screened at the Embassy in the framework of the Washington Environmental Film Festival, followed by an expert-talk on renewable energy.
The 323-mile Inn River is Central Europe’s largest tributary of the Danube, flowing through Switzerland, the Austrian Tyrol and Bavaria. Through the ages, the Inn’s legendary natural beauty has generated unique cultural regions. It has many faces: extensive gravel banks, picturesque sandy islets and extensive wetlands and riparian forests.
The source of the Inn lies in the Engadin valley, in the Swiss canton of Graubünden – a famously gorgeous landscape with local populations of ibex and ptarmigans. In Tyrol and Bavaria, where the river finally empties into the Danube, beavers and European otters that take advantage of the Inn as a habitat can be watched.
The film, however, also addresses the serious threats and concerns the river faces today: signs of massive human intervention are clearly apparent all along the Inn’s course, and the consequences are suffered by animal and plant life alike. Still, a journey along the Inn is a glorious expedition into natural history. And it proves that what the Inn was once called, still applies: the Green River in the Alps.
Introduced by Andreas Pawlitschek, Counselor, Cultural Affairs and Director, Austrian Cultural Forum.
Followed by a discussion on renewable energy with
- Dr. Samuel Lee Hancock, President & Executive Director, EmeraldPlanet [www.emerald-planet.org] and
- Hans Kordik, Counselor for Agricultural and Environmental Affairs, Embassy of Austria.
- Guenter Hoermandinger, Counselor for Environment at the Delegation of the European Union.