In collaboration with VCUarts Craft + Material Studies, the Institute for Sustainable Energy and Environment (ISEE), and the School of World Studies, the Climate Justice Materials Research Hub will present a screening and discussion of the award-winning documentary River of Gold, as a part of the Materiality in Film series. Sarah duPont, co-director and producer of this award winning documentary will be presenting the film and be part of a panel discussion.

Amazon Aid Foundation’s documentary River of Gold sounds the alarm about a dire threat to the Amazon rainforest threatening to push it to a tipping point: illicit gold mining.

Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, River of Gold is the harrowing account of a clandestine journey to uncover the savage unraveling of pristine jungle by illicit small-scale gold mining. Ron Haviv and Donovan Webster, two war journalists, led by Enrique Ortiz, a Peruvian scientist and activist, expose mining’s unthinkable, apocalyptic destruction and its global consequences.

About the Speaker

Sarah duPont is an award-winning humanitarian, educatorm and filmmaker and is a vocal advocate of ecological preservation. As the President and Founder of the Amazon Aid Foundation, Sarah works with Neotropical scientists to study Amazonian biodiversity with an eye toward educating the public and introducing cutting-edge conservation practices and on the ground solutions to the region. Sarah is a producer of the film River of Gold, the short film Mercury Uprising, and the "Anthem for the Amazon" music video. She has been engaged in educational innovation for 25 years, creating projects both locally and globally. She works to build cross disciplinary curriculum that support core subjects. In the fall of 2010, Sarah, along with Gigi Hancock, wife of legendary jazz great, Herbie Hancock, co­founded Ciamo, an arts and music school based in Benin, Africa. Sarah is also the creator, and producer of the Africa Calling project, a transmedia program to create awareness and promote preventatives for malaria.