Thursday through Sunday, Athens will experience the prospect of environmental destruction, food shortage, pollution, animal extinction and over-development as part of the Eugene P. Odum School of Ecology’s first EcoFocus Film Festival.

The festival, which is partly presented by the University’s River Basin Center, aims to use films from both local and nationally recognized filmmakers to inspire the audience and create a community forum in which it is possible to discuss human relationship to the environment and what each person can do to improve it.

“This festival is extremely important because it is an opportunity to bring together our entire community – UGA, Athens and beyond — to think about and talk about environmental issues,” said Sara Beresford, a University alumna and contractor assigned to putting together the festival.

“Film is really a great medium for doing this kind of advocacy because most people love watching movies and films have the potential to be very powerful, particularly on the large screen.”

The Festival will consist of 12 feature-length films, including two Sundance winners, a few local interest topics and 29 short films.

Celestea Sharp’s film “Carving Up Oconee: A Rural County Fights for its Future” is one of the films that deals with environmental issues that are unique to the Athens-Clarke County area. The film covers the three-year fight citizens forged over a truck stop that was going to be built on former farmland in Oconee County, and is, according to Sharp, “an inspiring story of democracy in action and the power that ordinary people have in protecting their environment.”

There will be a variety of accompanying events such as art exhibits, receptions and panel discussions to give the audience an in-depth understanding of the issues presented in some of the films.

One of the screenings that will receive this in-depth coverage is “Tableland,” a film that is a “culinary expedition,” according to the writer, producer and director Craig Noble, that goes on a search for the people and places that characterize North American small-scale and sustainable food production.

He describes the goal of his film to be direct advocacy of local food production through the delocalization of the food system infrastructure that has slowly deteriorated in the last 60 years.

The “Tableland” screening, which takes place at 6 p.m. Saturday and again at 1 p.m. Sunday, will be the centerpiece of Saturday night’s “Eating Close to Home” event and will be immediately followed by a discussion with Noble, Olivis Sargeant of Farm 255 and Craig Page of Promoting Local Agriculture & Cultural Experience. There will also be a reception with locally grown food from Farm 255 following the discussion.

Though this screening will be far from this film’s premiere, as Noble has screened it over 100 times in cities across the country, he still emphasizes the importance of the EcoFocus Festival as the primary reason he decided to include it in his traveling tour with the film.

“I actually have had six screenings in five cities in seven days but the reason I decided to come to Athens to be a part of this festival is because I think it is a great idea and my film is a very good match for it,” he said. “It is a one time only kind of festival and you wont be able to see a lot of the films anywhere else because they have limited runs unlike Hollywood movies.”