Submitted by the Friday Harbor Film Festival

Gala and festival

The Friday Harbor Film Festival is celebrating its fifth annual documentary film festival from Nov. 3 through 5 in Friday Harbor. Lynn Danaher and Karen Palmer founded the documentary film festival, five years ago, with the vision to share compelling documentary films that tell stories that are relevant and encourage viewers to be a force for positive change.

The Lifetime Achievement winner for 2017 will be announced at the Opening Night Gala, on Friday.

The FHFH also includes the Young Filmmakers Project. This mentorship program gives middle and high school students an opportunity to develop their own films. The goal is for students to achieve proficiency in the art of filmmaking. This year’s awardee, Dylan D’Haeze, is a young filmmaker from Orcas who made an award winning short film called “Plastic is Forever.”

The festival also includes an Awards Night on Sunday, where the audience selects films as their favorites. The categories are Tales of the Heart, Explorers and Adventures, Things to Consider and Local Heros, as well as the overall Audience Choice, Best Short Film and Young Filmmaker Film. This three-day event of quality film immersion promises to be entertaining, memorable and inspiring.

Local Hero Award

The Local Hero Award is presented, annually, to a present or former resident of San Juan Islands who has made outstanding contributions to the quality of life, impacting people, animals, the arts, or the environment.

Dylan D’Haeze, 13, is an Orcas resident and reminds us that being a local hero does not have an age restriction. If you care about the planet and everything that lives within it, and have the courage to share this message with the world, powerful things can happen.

What began as a seemingly simple quest – to know more about plastic and its impact on the environment – has thrust this young and thoughtful first-time filmmaker into a leadership role. Dylan continues to ask poignant and important questions, but he is now going far beyond satisfying his own curiosity to actively encouraging others to take action.

Dylan’s documentary, “Plastic is Forever,” will be featured at this year’s FHFF. It contains a powerful message about the necessity of reducing our dependence on plastic. Since the film was released, Dylan has been sharing his message across the country at various film festivals, schools and environmentally-based community events.

The film has received awards, including the Environmental Award from the prestigious International Ocean Film Festival in San Francisco, Best Children’s Film at the International Wildlife Film Festival, and Awards of Merit in both the Nature/Environment/Wildlife and Young Filmmaker categories at the Best of Shorts Film Festival. “Plastic is Forever” has also become part of a growing series called How Kids Can Change the Planet. For more information about this project, visit www.kidscansavetheplanet.com.

Dylan and his parents, Dawn and Kevin D’Haeze, will attend FHFH and have agreed to participate in the Young Filmmakers Project by mentoring other aspiring filmmakers who have important stories to tell. Kids like Dylan show initiative, and if they are positive and purposeful in their approach, they will accomplish wonderful things.

McLaglen Lifetime Achievement Award

This year’s coveted Andrew V. McLaglen Lifetime Achievement Award is being presented posthumously to Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet Tribal community leader and an advocate for Native American self-determination and financial independence.

The choice of Cobell as the award recipient reflects the broader mission of the Friday Harbor Film Festival — an event intended to shine light on stories and people who make a difference in the world. As local First Nations people are still fighting for their land and rights, it seemed appropriate for FHFF to honor a woman who bravely took on the federal government with unrelenting spirit, ultimately prevailing in her landmark class action lawsuit against the government for its gross mismanagement of the mineral-rich lands that had been stolen from the Native peoples. The historical settlement of the case restored tribal homelands to her beloved Blackfeet Nation and to many other tribes. Cobell’s story is told in the film “100 Years: One Woman’s Fight for Justice,” which is being screened during this year’s festival. Melinda Jenko, the filmmaker, will accept the Lifetime Achievement Award.

“100 Years” follows Cobell on the Blackfeet reservation as she tends to her cattle on the ranch, manages the lawsuit against the U.S. federal government from her tiny Blackfeet Development office, attends a local pow wow, testifies before Congress, and travels across the country to speak eloquently about the importance of participating in the fight for justice. In November of 2016, Cobell was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.