Representing Pioneers to the World since 1999
New: 
Display placard!--Now, for people with stores, centers, or organizations that carry and promote ecological and community-based products and resources, you can download and print out a display placard, in elegant color, that sums up the value of seeing EcoParque. For full quality results: save the image to your hard drive, print it on recycled, letter-sized card stock or paper, and put it up next to a stack of DVD and VHS copies that you can order at wholesale.
Ecoparque, the film, explores the creation and impact of Ecoparque, the place--a park flourishing on a formerly barren urban hillside thanks to an innovative system that uses residents' wastewater not only to transform one canyon, but to make a scientific and economic case for neighborhood-scale, nature-mimicking facilities being preferable over centralized conveyance and chemical treatment for many canyon communities.
Far from being only an entry point of people from Mexico to the United States, Tijuana is also an entry point of water that collects in the Tijuana River Watershed and flows via the Tijuana River and its tributaries from Mexico into the United States, where it empties into estuaries and coastal waters of the United States. In the developing neighborhoods of Tijuana, ecologists and architects from both countries have demonstrated that a decentralized park system based on permacultural principles brings broad, demonstrable benefits and a sustainable way of thinking about one of earth's most pressing challenges -- the conservation of water quality and resources in the midst of growing populations and economies. See this film, and arid urban hillsides will start to look like potential eco-park sites, toilet piping design will become a fun and engaging topic, and you'll wonder, "How do those micro-organisms do it?"!
Neighborhood members express how the rare green area provides a valued educational center and a shaded refuge in paved-over, desert Tijuana, Baja California. Ecoparque's faculty and staff describe how the biofiltration derives safe, non-smelly, and nutrient-rich water and compost that support the diverse ecosystem that has grown up around the facility. This reuse of "waste" simultaneously serves as a welcome alternative to releasing sewage into coastal waters. Ecoparque's architect looks at why people and infrastructure are attracted to Ecoparque, and their effect on the local standards of living. The video explores the viability of Ecoparque's zero-waste method as an affordable option for outskirt settlements along the Mexican/U.S. border and elsewhere on Earth that are currently without wastewater infrastructure. A leader of the Tijuana River Estuarine Reserve uncovers the institutional pressures that may play a role in determining Ecoparque's ultimate effect.
EcoParque grows on you!--literally, as nutrients the community contributes become nourishment for the park, and figuratively, because the concept is so demonstratively beneficial. With enthusiastic reception from students,
educators, planners, policy-analysts, and decision-makers around the world,
Ecoparque is a source of critical and constructive discussion
on cross-border relations, ecology, sustainable economic development,
community empowerment, and architecture, and it carries a moving story of
the resourcefulness of individuals within a community.
.
Order Ecoparque on DVD directly from Ecoparque's international DVD distributor, National Film Network.
Click
HERE for the ordering page.
EcoParque is distributed on VHS for $20 per copy by AK Press: ORDERING PAGE .
To capture and communicate the way people interact with places and with each other
By clicking to view EcoParque in English in streaming QuickTime now, it is understood that online viewers will contribute their support to the Ecoparque production team.EcoParque is a video about community, gardening, coastal areas, freedom, environmental responsibility, borders, and art. You will see yourself in EcoParque if you like plant nurseries, landscaping, water, architecture, public works, or global issues represented in local ones.
You should purchase this video for yourself, your organization, and your store/center because:
All this is truly within EcoParque. There are some things, such as humans' place in the water-nutrient cycle and the importance of community-based creativity, that you will forever think about differently after seeing this video.
The following guideline, as pointed out by Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., mandates the disposal of sewage in the ground, rather than dumping it into rivers or littering the countryside:
"And you shall have a place outside the military camp, when you shall go forth abroad. And you shall have a spade among your weapons; and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig therewith; and shall turn back and cover that which comes from you." (Deuteronomy 23:13-15)
Writer, Director, and Co-Producer -
Michael
A. Bedar:
Michael is the Founder of environ-MENTAL Productions, and the Director of Public Relations of the Tree of Life Foundation, a healing and "awakening" oasis and permaculture center. His formal education at UCSD was in the interaction between cognition and our natural, social, and technological environments. He is a founding member of the Iris Forum, the first multipartisan environmental thinktank. Michael was Navigator of the Democreation Project, and has been the liaison between students and faculty of Ecobuilders, a program that offers
the opportunity to learn resourceful planning and building methods from
Ecoparque's architect in El Valle
de las Palmas, Mexico. He designed and developed user interfaces for
environmental informatics systems,
and produces media exploring scientific, social, and philosophical issues.
Co-Producer, Editor, and Co-Director of Photography - Taylor Sharp:
Taylor, former
Chief Editor of Campus Watch, the University of California, San Diego's
television feature magazine, and founder of Sharp Eye Films, is a
photographer and an editor with KUSI Television.
Co-Director of Photography - Kiley Schwehr:
Kiley is currently a Producer
at KUSI Television, and gained experience in Visual Arts, Film, and Media at UCSD
and in working in concert with Spike Lee.
Narrator - Christine Abastillas:
Christine is pursuing a career as a
broadcast journalist in Los Angeles, and plans to continue her education in
Communication Studies at San Diego State University.
Interpreter - Carlos Contreras:
Carlos is the Director of several films in
his own right.
Strategic Advisor - Alisa Katz:
Alisa is Features Programmer at the
Santa Barbara International Film
Festival.
Musical score composed and performed by Rory Clarke* and
Michael
Bedar.
* Rory Clarke hit the road after completing the score to
Ecoparque, when he was working in geophysics research at the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and has not been seen or heard by
environ MENTAL Productions since.
environ-MENTAL Productions gratefully acknowledges Adriene Hughes of the UCSD Media Center, and Renee Lockett
