Kevin and I have just returned from the International Wildlife Film Festival, held each year in Missoula, Montana. It’s the oldest film festival devoted to wildlife topics. Not sure entirely how we got selected, although the CA freshwater shrimp is technically “wildlife.” It’s just that there was our little film, “A Simple Question,” with all of the big boys: National Geographic, BBC, Discovery, PBS’ “Nature,” “Animal Planet,” as well as other independently-made films on attention-getting topics and creatures, like “The Cove.”

As one might imagine, it was both thrilling and humbling to have our film selected to screen along with the big-budget “glamour” titles from the networks. There were so many well-crafted and beautifully shot productions on marquis species like grizzly bears and wolves, and shot in some of the world’s most remote and pristine locations. And of course, using the absolute best equipment money can buy (and invent, for that matter). And there we were, with kids planting willows on dairy ranches in Marin County to protect a tiny crustacean — no bone-chilling action scenes of tigers taking down prey, or death-defying views of charging elephants. Truth be told, ours was not the typical kind of submission to a wildlife [continue reading >>>]