Schedule of films + speakers

Join us for six days full of festival goodness April 17-22, 2012. All screenings will take place at Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Simon Fraser University, located at 149 West Hastings Street in Vancouver.

ThursdayApril 199:00pm

SWITCH

104 mins/ 2011/ USA

What will it really take, to transition from oil and coal, to the energies of tomorrow? SWITCH goes where no film has gone before, deep into the world’s most restricted energy sites, to depoliticize competing power sources, make the technical accessible, and discover the truth of our energy future. After numerous sold out screenings, test audiences have raved, calling it, ‘The most important energy film since An Inconvenient Truth.’

Best of Fest Winner Colorado Environmental Film Festival

WEBSITE: www.switchenergyproject.com

Switch Co-presented by:

Speaker Panel

Joel L. Bellenson graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Biology, in addition to studying International Relations and Comparative East Asian Industrial Economics at Sophia University in Tokyo. He went on to become the Co-Founder and CEO of Pangea Systems/DoubleTwist, which assembled and annotated the first draft of the Human Genome, provided low cost access to academics and kept it from being patented. The company pioneered large-scale gene expression and protein-expression informatics analysis and was voted #1 privately held biotech company in the world by Red Herring Magazine in 1998 and 1999.

Bellenson was also the Co-Founder and CEO of DigiScents which pioneered digital scent synthesis as well as the Co-Founder and CEO of Upstream Biosciences which used artificial intelligence software to discover new medicines against drug-resistant tropical infectious diseases such as African Sleeping Sickness, Malaria, and Black Fever.

The scientist, entrepreneur, visionary and author currently resides in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Bellenson's book Equal Watts: The Solar Emancipation of the Third World challenges the prevailing belief that we will need 5 Earths to enable the billions of people to live like Americans. Instead it asserts that the only limit to the "carrying capacity" of the planet is whether the creative capacity of the Global South is unleashed by the Solar Revolution.

The runaway exponential development of solar power, LED lights, desalination and hydroponics will soon render all the debates about climate change, peak oil and population growth moot and usher in an era that turns the current global geopolitical and economic order upside down, empowering and emancipating the Global South, and radically restructuring cities, the division between town and country and the family itself.

"Equal Watts" uncovers a longstanding pattern, dating back at least 600 years, to the cycle of economic, ecological, political and military crises and the exponential development of the technologies that overcome these crises. As Mark Twain said that "History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes a lot."

Accolades:
- Cover of Wired Magazine (Nov, 1999)
- Cover of Business 2.0 (Sept, 2000)
- Articles in Wall St. Journal, New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Der Spiegel, BBC
- Appearances on ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings, CNN, CBC, NHK
- On Red Herring Top 50 Companies for two years in a row (Pangea Systems)
- Best New Technology Awards from Saatchi & Saatchi, RetailVision2000, and Macromedia (DigiScents)
- Ernst & Young, Entrepreneur of the Year nominee (Upstream Biosciences).

Writing Credits:
- Business 2.0, Future Shock 2 Issue, 25 Visions of What's Next: "Sensory Download"
- DNA Microarrays, A Practical Guide, Chapter on Bioinformatics.

Public Speaking:
- Human Genome and Drug Discovery conferences (US, EU various 1995-2000)
- Internet World Asia, (Singapore, Hong Kong, 2000)
- African Union Conference on Infectious Disease (Angola, 2007)
- Chaired World Health Organization bioinformatics conference (Nigeria, 2008)

David A. Bennett is Director, External Relations for FortisBC.
He is responsible for government, community and Aboriginal affairs. David has been involved in the oil and gas industry for over 20 years, holding positions with Shell Canada, Westcoast Energy, Centra Gas BC and most recently, FortisBC. During that time, his roles have included work in marketing and customer service, business development, strategic planning, managing energy product and service development activities, product management for natural gas product lines and energy efficiency and conservation programs, communications, risk management and gas supply. David holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Victoria with a double major in economics and computer science.

Matt Dickson
Renewable Agri-energy Initiative Program Manager, ARDCorp Matt has worked as a renewable energy project manager for the past six years. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics and Geography, and a Masters in Resource and Environmental Management from Simon Fraser University. Matt currently works for the B.C. Agricultural Research and Development Corporation helping to facilitate renewable agri-energy production through project management and support. Matt has extensive experience with anaerobic digestion systems and has travelled around North America and Europe learning about the technology. A long-time environmentalist, Matt has a keen interest in promoting environmental sustainability and triple bottom-line thinking in the agricultural sector.