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The Filmmakers

A climate change documentary - feature with a sci-fi twist.

Can two aliens, three news reporters and a snowman motivate eight billion people to save themselves from the consequences of climate change?

Synopsis: Aliens contact reporters to film a news conference about the imminent threat of climate change and request the reporters make a documentary exploring the aliens’ solutions.

The opening scene: three reporters waiting in Canyonlands National Park in the dark of night. They’ve been chosen by aliens to witness and film a news conference. A spaceship arrives. Two aliens are beamed down, a humanoid man and woman. They state that if the earth continues to warm, humans will not survive. The Earth must immediately begin to cool. The aliens make several suggestions to reverse global warming.

The aliens ask the reporters to deliver the film footage to network headquarters for broadcast, and make a documentary advocating for their suggestions. The aliens then fly away.

Thus begins their 5 day road trip across mid-America, from Utah to New York City, documenting a wide range of climate change issues. Informal conversations are interspersed with official on-site news reports giving viewers a good understanding of our climate change crisis and the obstacles we face.

A subplot - all the solutions will cost a lot of money! Where will the money come from and how will we use it to create a green world? What is the right mix between capitalism and socialism?

We don’t have much time to figure this out. “The Filmmakers" is a call to collective action.

  • STEVE FIRKINS
    Director
  • STEVE FIRKINS
    Writer
  • STEVE FIRKINS
    Producer
  • Darrell Johnston
    Key Cast
    "Max Jackson"
  • Kimberly Braun
    Key Cast
    "Zoey Jones"
  • Lindsay Rae Taylor
    Key Cast
    "Maya Taylor"
  • Lea Kalisch
    Key Cast
    "Luna / Eve"
  • Omar Abdilasis
    Key Cast
    "Axel / Adam"
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Feature
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 46 minutes 36 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 21, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    70,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Los Angeles International Sci-Fi Film Festival
    Los Angeles
    United States
    June 14, 2023
    Best Documentary Feature
  • Austin Lift-off Film Festival April 2023
    Austin, Texas
    United States
    March 30, 2023
    Selection
  • Docs Without Borders International Film Festival

    United States
    February 19, 2023
    Exceptional Merit Award
  • Eau Claire International Film Festival
    Eau Claire, WI
    November 20, 2022
    Best Documentary Feature
  • The IndieFest Awards

    February 3, 2023
    Award of Merit Documentary Feature
  • New York International Film Awards
    New York City
    November 6, 2022
    Finalist - Documentary Feature
  • Odyssey Fest (Awards Event)
    Pennsylvania
    United States
    August 27, 2022
    2nd Place Documentary Feature Film
Director Biography - STEVE FIRKINS

I was born in 1954 during the great American baby boom. I grew up in Blue Earth, Minnesota, on the gently rolling plains in the south central part of the state. I was deeply affected by the vast expanse of ever changing earth and sky.

During the 1960’s America was racing to the moon. The world began to see the Earth from the new perspective. In high school I became interested in art and started photographing nature and the landscapes of the “Blue Earth“ planet.

In college I studied art, philosophy, politics, and religion, choosing an artistic identity as the main source of who I was because it included all the other identities. I graduated from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa in 1978 with a degree in art and art education.

In 1978, I moved to the Mississippi River Valley in the Winona, Minnesota area. It was then that I first began using the word Curvism to describe my art and philosophy about art.

In 1983 I began graduate school at Winona State University and received a Masters Degree in counseling in 1987.

In 1987, my family and I moved to Black River Falls, Wisconsin, which is located in a mix of dairy lands and hilly pine and hardwood forests. In 1992, I built an art studio addition onto my house and used Mondays and weekends for making art. From 1987 to 2016 I worked as a mental heath therapist and alcohol/drug counselor to earn a living. I moved to St. Peter, Minnesota in 2018 and now play full time doing my art, writing and filmmaking.

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Director Statement

The Filmmakers movie is based on the art and philosophy of Curvism.

I began to use the word Curvism in 1978 to describe my art and philosophy. Curvism grew out of the landscape. The horizon, the hills and valleys, the flow of water, the shape of rocks, plants and animals, and the human figure are composed of curves. Nature is curved with few exceptions. The straight lined, angular, man-made world sharply contrasts with the natural world. Curvism believes that humans have boxed themselves into their own world, isolating themselves from the curved, spiritual world of nature.

Western culture is man-made, built from a male perspective. It is the view of science and technology, reason and logic, power and aggression, conformity and competition, materialism and commercialism, quantity and packaging, fragmentation and separation. This world view is symbolized by the straight line, the rectangle, the square and the cube.

During the Twentieth Century the power of this world view increased exponentially with science and commerce gaining almost total control over the way the world and humans are viewed and defined. Modern art began with Cubism and has since been dominated by the symbolism of the square and the exploration of the rectangular format.

Curvism seeks to move out of the square, rectangular, cubed world and into the sphere of the curved line, the circle and the ellipse.

Curvism views the world from a more female perspective. Curvism speaks of nature and the earth, the environment and the ecological. Curvism seeks wisdom. It is about wholeness and diversity and concerns itself with quality. Curvism values the senses and the sensual, the intuitive and the experiential, the emotions and empathy, caring and cooperation. It is oriented to cycles and the nonlinear, to both spontaneity and reflection. Curvism is concerned with relationships and ultimately involves love. For too long the spiritual world of nature and the female qualities of humans have been dominated, suppressed, repressed and destroyed by the forces of the man-made Western, square world view.

There has been a growing awareness that the modern-postmodern culture of science and commerce cannot feed the soul’s deeper longings or satisfy spirituality’s higher aspirations. Curvism believes that cultural renewal and a new balance can be achieved by moving toward and through the spiritual curved world view.