What hooked me into the fashion world was never labels – it’s always been fashion as an art form. I’m just as wowed by artists’ inspiration as I am at the finished products. Sometimes it’s hard for designers to get their messages across in mere words: ever tried to articulate your love, your vision, your art? It’s not easy.

Here’s a list of some of my mini film favorites of designers sharing their passion. Think of this as a fashion inspiration mix tape, just for you.

Amy’s Mix: Girls on Film

cmarchuska

What can you do with a scarf? See designer Christine Marchuska herself in the last shot lifting her own.

Samantha Pleet

Au Revoir Simone and a cool newspaper-riddled wall is always inspiring.

Reet Aus

She designs for swanky boutiques but also, movies…

Feral Childe

Always quirky and artsy and makes me giggle.

Mothlove

Is just plain beautiful.

Image: geishaboy500

DVDs vaulted into existence in 1997, a box office year dominated by the likes of Titanic, Good Will Hunting and L.A. Confidential. Since then, more than 10 billion of the movie discs and their bulky plastic packages have shipped to North American retailers alone, according to sales data compiled by the Digital Entertainment Group.

Tons of DVDs go unmeasured by the EPA into the solid waste stream each year, even though they can be recycled through entities like Second Spin (which we wrote about in August of this year). While Netflix, iTunes and Hulu reduce consumer demand for piles of the silver plastic, as long as DVDs remain profitable, studios will continue to make and sell them.

Thankfully, one startup, Torch Films in New York, is lowering their waste output and raising the bar for the manufacture and distribution of new discs by using a lightweight format called Flex DVD. It’s manufactured by CD Digital Card, a subsidiary of Zoba International in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

The studio’s first feature, Marina of the Zabbaleen, a documentary by Engi Waseff, is now sold as a “Flex disc” following a Tribeca Film Festival debut in September 2009. Using 50% less polycarbonate material than other DVDs, the Marina… DVD and sleeve package are 100% recyclable and are made of 95% recycled materials.

Chief executive Tim Hobbs and finance chief Ori Dov Gratch, who co-founded Torch Films and gave this new format a chance in the market, spoke to EcoSalon about what it takes to greenlight efficiency in an industry known for excess.

Tim Hobbs and Ori Dov Gratch holding a Flex DVD

From the start was Torch Films intention to be a “green” studio?

Tim: I’m not going to lie about it. When we first started this business, our goal was just to support and release high quality, if low budget films from talented, responsible people who otherwise might not get a chance. We didn’t have a focus on green operations, a particular genre or anything besides bringing a systematic approach to our projects.

So what inspired your efforts to release a lower-impact DVD?

Tim: Marina of the Zabbaleen is what inspired us to take environmental initiative here. The film itself, as you may know, is a cinematic documentary about seven-year-old Marina, who lives in a garbage-recycling village outside of Cairo. It’s a portrait of her family and childhood, and about this community. They are entrepreneurial people, not activists but people who are recycling for survival. They have built a system we could learn from here in the U.S. At their peak levels, they recycle 90% of everything. They collect and manage Cairo’s garbage, and have one of the highest rates of recycling in the world. I have to credit the Zabbaleen and Engi Waseff, the director of this film, for giving us motivation.

Did it cost your business a great deal to produce more ecologically sensible DVDs vs. traditional?

Tim: The disc is not any more expensive to make than the older types of DVDs. The tough questions from a business perspective were about finding the more efficient technology, understanding if it worked, and how well it has been tested. There’s always a risk adopting the new. Other film studios might be wary to make a massive release on this 50% lower-impact, flexible new type of disc. [He holds a disc sample up and bends it.] But we liked the manufacturer’s reputation, and their comprehensive playability studies.

Ori: Let’s get nerdy for a minute. We had a feeling this was meant to be after we learned that Flex DVD in lab testing was compatible with 99% of players out there, including game-consoles that play DVDs. After we did our own share of bland research about things like disc drive technology, packaging, inks and how well different types of DVD cases sell at retail, and even tested the discs ourselves, we were ready to go. We kind of brag about this on our website and in our marketing materials. The 5% of material that is not from-recycled is a non-toxic, biodegradable clay coating that makes the disc and case printable. It’s a very, very thin layer of clay. All the ink we’ve used is soy-based, even on the DVD itself. We’re a first to use this format, and take it this far, and we love that.

Do you have hope Hollywood will catch onto this notion?

Ori: We’re not the first to control our waste output in general, though we are doing more than others have before. Disney released Wall-E in fairly green packaging. We view that as a leading step. We hope they and others keep shifting to more environmentally and socially responsible methods. But for large studios we realize it may take time. We’re a lean, new organization so we can do these things, and make it part of our company in the first place.

Tim: We’re not green experts, but we’re in touch with them. We have sent this DVD out to industry people for review. We just qualified for Academy consideration in 2010. So people have seen it. If they want to follow our example, great, but we’ll never tell other studios how to run their business.

Has there been resistance from anyone about your selling this film on a new format and in a non-standard case?

Ori: The film industry being full of characters, we’ve encountered some disbelief and resistance. But this DVD is about mankind leaving a smaller footprint. The more we tell people about what we want to do, the more people seem to want to help us.

Tim: Our package is not the smallest possible, to be fair. As a studio and distributor, we have an obligation to directors, and investors in our business to market our films, get them to audiences, and make money while inspiring people. The DVD we offer has to be able to stand in a wall slot at a store. In that way, we encounter resistance. Shoppers, when we tested out the notion of just using a small square package, thought the DVDs were promotional materials, and would just take them for free. Or they wouldn’t notice them at all. So, here we are, making something that holds its own at retail and begins to change expectations, with a 50% lower impact than any other DVD we’ve seen in a store.

What’s next for this film or for Torch Studios?

Tim: During the making of this film, the Zabbaleen community was hit hard by swine flu the H1N1 virus. The government in Cairo required them to slaughter their pigs, which had been instrumental in processing food-waste. We’re looking for ways to help the Zabbaleen become more profitable, and to make up for the loss of their resources. We donate 10% of retail sales of this film. But we’re looking to do more through our network, which includes a lot of social entrepreneurs. We’re also working on our next two releases, which aren’t documentaries or green. But their packaging will be.

Has greening your business changed your lives? How?

Ori: We have both become fanatical about recycling personally and at the office. I’m more aware when I’m looking at ingredients in grooming products what my own impact is, and slowly shifting my purchasing habits.

Tim: I’m semi-vegetarian, and as a New Yorker tend not to collect a lot of possessions or drive a car. So I feel like my footprint was already lower than your average American. But we found this out through research for the DVD-release – the U.S. Postal Service is greener than other shipping services – so I now go to the post office as my default. And switching to cups and bottles that are reusable, not disposable, was big for me.

Image: The Artifex

One of a pair of food documentaries making the rounds this summer, Fresh, The Movie, in contrast to Food Inc. (reviewed here last week) presents a vision of the possible by profiling heroes all over the country who are changing the way we eat. If Food Inc. was your wake up call, Fresh, The Movie is your call to action.

Fresh’s strength is that it shows the incredible creativity of individuals who are devoting their lives to producing food differently. The success of these individuals shows how organic, ecological farming methods can be viable, in contrast to what the naysayers in conventional food say.

Another strength of the movie is that it profiles people all over the country, not just on the coasts. For those who think that the good food movement is all about Berkeley and Alice Waters, this movie proves that’s just not true.

The movie features a small chain of family-owned grocery stores in Kansas and Missouri. The owner, David Ball, partners with local farmers to sell food produced nearby. At first glance, the grocery stores look like regular grocery stores (not glossy specialty food markets) but alongside the usual national brands are lots of choices of locally-produced produce, honey, jam, and fresh meat, available to everyday people in the community who might not shop at specialty markets. Ball’s stores are successful and they contribute to the health of the local economy by supporting nearby farmers instead of cheaper international producers. Ball’s business, community and customers are all better off for it.

Joel Salatin, hero of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food, Inc., is also profiled. His operation is so efficient that he says he makes $3,000 an acre, in contrast to his conventional farming neighbor’s $50 an acre. His customers are not all wealthy foodies. They range from people in his local community (and hours away) to fast food chain Chipotle.

Will Allen, who we talked about here on EcoSalon recently, (and who was profiled in the New York Times just last week) is also lauded in the film for his work in urban farming in Milwaukee.

There’s a farmer in Missouri who once raised confinement pigs until he was gored and nearly died from the antibiotic resistant bacteria he contracted in the injury. When he got out of the hospital, he realized how dangerous it is to dose animals with antibiotics to keep them healthy. He slaughtered his entire herd, started from scratch raising pastured pigs and has never looked back.

The movie includes a conventional farmer growing corn and soy in Iowa to illustrate the struggles family farmers are up against in this country. George Naylor has fought Monsanto and other biotech companies against the negative impacts of genetically modified crops.

If you haven’t heard of Fresh, The Movie, that’s probably because it’s being distributed grassroots style in private and small public screenings. I attended a public screening that featured a panel of local food activists, the filmmaker ana Sofia joanes and George Naylor – who traveled from Iowa to California to be there – answering questions after the film.

What a brilliant form of distribution to get people talking and working together for a better food system. Anyone can host a screening. In contrast to walking out of the movie theater and wondering how to get involved, you’ll already be among your own community and you can start to make things happen right then and there. Think of the difference you can make by just hosting a screening in your home, workplace, or community center. You can reach 20 people for just $20. Or up to 50 for only $50. Click here to find out how.

As someone who lives and breathes food politics, agricultural sustainability and food justice on a daily basis, even I was surprised by some of the things I saw in this film. Food Inc. explosively details exactly how the food system serves the profit motives of just a few mega corporations, while failing to serve eaters, our health, the environment and the animals and workers trapped in the system.

In interviews, the filmmaker has said that he didn’t set out to make such a one-sided film but that the industries he profiled – Tyson, Monsanto, Smithfield, et al – wouldn’t agree to be interviewed or shown in the film. I don’t blame them. The information gathered from hidden cameras and interviews with brave individuals who don’t have a whole lot left to lose presents facts so damning and so incredible, it’s impossible to dispute them.

Anyone who agreed to talk on camera for this movie risked being sued. The mother who lost her young son to E. coli cannot say what she herself eats due to the risk of being sued for libel under the “veggie libel laws.”

Of all the food documentaries I’ve seen and food system exposés I’ve read, this film did a wonderful job of showing the human side of the injustices in our food system. Not just the environmental degradation or the lack of food safety, but the grinding human (and animal) oppression inherent in the system.

I was quite literally sick at the rampant and systemic injustices unleashed on farmers, farmworkers, animals, the environment and eaters as just a routine part of business-as-usual in the food industry.

If enough people see this film it could have the same impact that Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle had on the meat packing industry in the early part of the 20th century. I think there should be a campaign encouraging everyone who cares about food to take at least one person who doesn’t care about food to see this film: co-workers, mothers, fathers, friends and lovers…because if everyone sees it, nobody will stand for business-as-usual any longer.

In addition to the mother who lost her son due to tainted ground beef, the film profiles a variety of people, like ordinary working class citizens who would like to eat better than fast food, but cannot afford to; poultry house workers who toil under horrifying conditions and are utterly powerless (the industry recruits and buses workers from within Mexico); and farmers under contract to large corporations who have no say in how they run their businesses or treat their animals and who don’t even make a living wage.

A Tyson chicken farmer agreed to go on camera. She had her contract pulled because she refused to upgrade her chicken houses according to company specifications that would have prevented any light or air from getting into her already crowded, fetid and utterly nightmarish chicken houses. Chicken farmers make an average of only $18,000 a year as contract farmers for Tyson Corporation. If the chickens and the farmers are treated so poorly, can you imagine what the mostly undocumented immigrant processors are subjected to?

Then there’s the man who runs a seed cleaning business (which used to be common practice back when farmers saved seeds). Monsanto sued him. His crime? By cleaning seeds, he’s “encouraging farmers to violate Monsanto patents”.

Nevermind that these farmers are the last holdouts not using Monsanto’s seeds, and should have every right to clean and save the seeds they use. Scaring the hell out of any last resisters is this company’s way of ensuring complete and total ownership of the seed market. When the seed cleaner was sued, he lost most of his customers because they became fearful of being sued themselves. The man had only three acres of land to his name. He finally settled with Monsanto, rather than fight and risk losing what little he had.

There are many more stories like this, as well as enough examples of a different way of doing things, that you will leave the theater thinking more carefully about what you are actually buying when you buy food and inspired to support some of the mavericks out there who are doing it right.

At the end of the film, one farmer says that if the people start demanding better food, the farmers will step up and provide it. In fact, farmers would love to do so. Without the consumer’s support, the risk to farmers for switching to a healthier paradigm is too great. If farmers know they can make a living doing the right thing, they will. This is the one essentially hopeful fact about this film. We do have the power to change the system. It’s as simple as refusing to buy what the system is selling. Don’t know how? The film offers several easy ways to start as the credits roll. They’re also linked here.

Image: Senor Codo

Tsk tsk! This has nothing to do with Hustler or hardcore! Get your mind out of the gutter and more into the art of…oh, bug sex.

The fabulous Isabella Rossellini hosts her second series of delightfully wacky short films about the sex lives of different insects and animals. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of sexy nature – welcome to Green Porno. It sounds racy, but the clips are tame and respectful enough to educate children. Seriously.

And what exactly will you find in an episode of Green Porno? A whale with a 6-foot penis, an asexual starfish and a sadomasochistic, hermaphroditic snail. But the weird part is that Rossellini dresses up in kooky costumes and portrays the animals themselves. C’mon, you know you want to watch. And bring your sense of humor with you.

Find Green Porno on the Sundance Channel or watch the clips online.

Destruction in the Amazon. Clear-cutting of virgin forests. These are sad, infuriating events, but they can also seem distant – even abstract. How about the wanton destruction of a thriving Los Angeles community garden? Now that brought me to tears.

Who owns the land?

In 1992, after the Los Angeles riots, a 14-acre community garden was formed in an industrial section of South Central LA. Over 350 families banded together to create an urban paradise and grow their own food in the middle of a largely forgotten and blighted concrete jungle.

There was only one problem. Although they were clearly stewards of the land, they never legally owned it. Thus began a saga that played out for years and garnered the active support of the likes of Daryl Hannah. The families had been granted a revocable license to use the lot, but in 2004 the original owner decided to sell it and a few years later bulldozed the lush gardens (watch the heartbreaking video and you’ll be moved to tears) to build another warehouse in an already industrial part of town. The gardeners banded together as the South Central Farmers and protested to save their community gardens, but it wasn’t to be. The story is poignantly told in the Academy Award nominated documentary entitled The Garden.

Adding insult to injury, the proposed warehouse to be built on the now bulldozed and barren lot is a storage and distribution center for Forever 21. The South Central Farmers are working hard to stop that from happening too, and if possible, reclaim their beloved land to create paradise once again.

Listen to Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi