Aware Guide - Your Guide to Life Changing Media

Soraida Salwala opened the world’s first Asian Elephant Hospital in Lampang, Thailand in 1993 to treat elephants that are ill or injured as a result of work, abuse or neglect. To date, she and her staff have treated over 3,000 elephants for everything from eye infections to knife wounds, gunshot wounds, broken bones, drug addictions and building prosthetic limbs for the survivors of landmine accidents. Since then, the Asian Elephant population in Thailand declined from 40,000 to less than 2,600 left in captivity.

Inspired by the true story that captured the hearts of people across the world, the rescue adventure Big Miracle tells the amazing tale of a small town news reporter (John Krasinski) and an animal-loving volunteer (Drew Barrymore) who are joined by rival world superpowers to save a family of majestic gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle.

THE WHALE tells the true story of a young, wild killer whale - an orca - nicknamed Luna, who lost contact with his family on the coast of British Columbia and turned up alone in a narrow stretch of sea between mountains, a place called Nootka Sound.

On September 27, for one special night nationwide, famed Chimpanzee researcher Dr. Jane Goodall will appear LIVE in hundreds of select movie theaters. There will be special celebrity appearances, including Dave Matthews and others. Jane's Journey, including appearances by Angelina Jolie and Pierce Brosnan, will be screened, there will be interaction with theatre audiences. Audiences will have the first look ever at historic unseen footage of her first days in Africa recently found in her attic, and the dynamic impact she and the Jane Goodall Institute programs have contributed to the planet. Also participating in the event are Charlize Theron, Nancy Cartwright and Angie Everhart.

Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent ac-tion, by agents of misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.

Filmmaker Kristin Canty’s quest to find healthy food for her four children turned into an educational journey to discover why access to these foods was being threatened. What she found were policies that favor agribusiness and factory farms over small family-operated farms selling fresh foods to their communities.

Academy Award® Winner for Best Documentary of 2009, THE COVE follows an elite team of activists, filmmakers and free divers as they embark on a covert mission to penetrate a remote and hidden cove in Taiji, Japan, shining a light on a dark and deadly secret.

A little over a year ago we were struggling to get our film, “The Cove,” into Sundance. We finished the film at 4 a.m., two hours before I was to board a plane and hand deliver it to the festival organizers. They were understandably getting nervous back in Park City where a snowstorm was threatening air travel.

This was my first film, and I remember asking the weary, seasoned post-production crew, "What do you think, do we have a good film?"

"Prepare yourself for a disaster," came the reply from someone who had worked with Academy Award-winning directors.

The Cove begins in Taiji, Japan, where former dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry has come to set things right after a long search for redemption. In the 1960s, it was O’Barry who captured and trained the 5 dolphins who played the title character in the international television sensation “Flipper.”

But his close relationship with those dolphins – the very dolphins who sparked a global fascination with trained sea mammals that continues to this day -- led O’Barry to a radical change of heart. One fateful day, a heartbroken Barry came to realize that these deeply sensitive, highly intelligent and self-aware creatures so beautifully adapted to life in the open ocean must never be subjected to human captivity again. This mission has brought him to Taiji, a town that appears to be devoted to the wonders and mysteries of the sleek, playful dolphins and whales that swim off their coast.