Sh’mal Ellenberg will be honored with a documentary film on May 2 at 7:30PM at University of Florida in Reitz Union on the second floor. It’s about his work with the homeless.

The film is scheduled 2nd, following a reception. Come at 6:30 to see all three films, or arrive by 7:15 to mingle, eat and drink before watching A Sh’mal World.

Please RSVP to Dori Faust, dcfaust@jou.ufl.edu or 352-392-0577.

April 18th – April 24th

The Hipp’s EARTH WEEK FILM (view clip)

This fascinating Florida documentary re-creates a historic trip that Pulitzer-prize winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings once made on the river in 1933. Rawlings, encouraged and joined by her Cracker neighbor Dessie Smith, launched a small boat just south of the aptly-named “Puzzle Lake” southeast of Orlando. The pair spent the next ten days navigating downstream on the river. The river trip, chronicled as the “Hyacinth Drift” chapter in her book “Cross Creek”, is Marjorie’s attempt to find solace from the “hardships that seemed to me more than one could bear alone.” It celebrates the cultural and ecological links that create a true “sense of place” – which in modern, fast growing Florida is a quest with a keen sense of urgency.. This film examines the many ways in which the St. Johns River of Florida has shaped culture—literature, art and music—over time. But it also reveals the challenges and contrasts found in the modern trip that the two modern-day river sojourners. One is Winter Park resident Leslie Kemp Poole, a writer, a teacher in the Environmental Studies Program at Rollins College, and a Ph.D. candidate in environmental history at the University of Florida. The other is Jennifer Chase, a musician, song writer, playwright, and educator. The film attempts to help us understand the connection between people and place. Coming to grips with how others have been shaped by geography can help us appreciate the vital energies still available to us here. These energies—hidden in the grace of our rivers, the magic of our springs, and the mystery of our unique wet-dry terrain—can inform our sensibilities. In the best of worlds, they may even lead us to some wisdom about the sustainability of land and water, of people and culture. 55mins/2008-Florida/NR