After a year hiatus, RioFest Environmental Film Festival will be back in 2010.

The two-day event — featuring 25 short and feature-length films — is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Jan. 29-30, at Macey Center on the campus of New Mexico Tech. Featured films include three of the most highly acclaimed films addressing the environment to come out in recent years: "Food, Inc.," "The Music Tree" and "King Corn."

Frances Deters, executive director for the 2010 RioFest, said the film festival skipped a year after its previous executive director, Carol Lynn Tiegs, took a job out of state.

Not wanting to see the festival go away forever, Deters assembled a new board of directors and began the process of reviving the event. A call for entries went out late last summer. A committee then narrowed the list and selected the films that will be shown at the 2010 event.

Deters said RioFest not only raises awareness of environmental issues, but serves to showcase the City of Socorro.

"RioFest gives Socorro an opportunity to be in the forefront of a growing movement of communities opening the dialogue about long-term sustainability in terms of food security, renewable energy, lifestyle downsizing and accessibility to water," she said.

In a press release announcing the film lineup, Deters said the theme of the 2010 RioFest is "Solutions."

"Riofest seeks to empower its patrons by educating them and then providing them with opportunities to engage in sustainable practices," she said. "Cinema has the unique ability to engage emotions through communal relationships between individuals and communities. At Riofest, we want to expose people to those communities and healthy ways to get involved with their ideas. The lineup of films for our 2010 event achieves that goal."

"Food Inc." (2008) will be the featured film to close out the festival on Saturday night.

This film exposes the forces driving the food industry in America, the effect they have on the health and welfare of the consumer, and the risks to farmers and the environment, according to the news release. Filmmaker Robert Kenner reveals shocking truths about the food we eat, where it came from and how some forward-thinking entrepreneurs are offering solutions to problems plaguing America's food industry.

Saturday's matinee will be "King Corn" (2007), a documentary about two college buddies who move to America's heartland to find out where their food comes from. With the help of neighbors, genetically modified seeds and powerful herbicides, they produce a bumper crop on one-acre of Iowa land. But they later learn some troubling lessons about the how we farm and the food we eat when they follow their corn they produced into the food system.

Friday night's feature will be an enchanting opus from Brazilian director Otavio Juliano, "The Music Tree" (2009). Premiering earlier this year, "The Music Tree" examines the plight of the Pernambuco tree in Brazil's Atlantic rainforest. The wood from the Pernambuco is considered the finest for the manufacture of violin, viola and cello bows and has been used since Mozart was composing masterpieces 250 years ago. The film documents efforts to save the trees and the music that depends on it.

"These films provide a strong foundation for the 2010 RioFest Environmental Film Festival, but there are many others that serve to empower individuals to engage in sustainable practices for the betterment of humankind and the environment in which we live," Deters stated in the release.

Other feature-length films to be shown at 2010 RioFest include "Chaparri, the Seven Bears of the Sacred Mountain" (2008), "The Greening of Southie" (2007) and "Addicted to Plastic" (2007).

RioFest Environmental Film Festival will also show "Affluenza" (1997) and its sequel, "Escape from Affluenza" (1998). Both have a running time of about an hour.

The first film, "Affluenza," explores the social and environmental consequences of materialism and over-consumption.

The sequel, "Escape from Affluenza," profiles people and organizations working for solutions that bring our lives in better balance with the environment.

The festival will also include the "Meatrix" series of short animations.

Spoofing The Matrix movies, "The Meatrix" (2003) is a creative and humorous approach to educating viewers about factory crop and dairy farming.

"The Meatrix II, Revolting" and "The Meatrix II-1/2" (both 2006) expand on the original's theme, while promoting social action.

Several films focus on water, including "Rio Grande, River of Connection," a documentary produced as an educational film for students by Alexis Rykken of San Antonio, N.M.

"Reviving a Watershed" and "Mixing: A Dialogue on Wastewater" are two other films that focus on water-related issues.

"It's important that we all recognize and understand the value of our limited resources and what we must do to preserve them," Deters said.

Festival tickets are priced at $25 for a two-day pass and $15 for one day. Tickets for the Saturday night showing of "Food, Inc." are $5 each.

Tickets may be purchased by check or money order. Since the RioFest Environmental Film Festival is a 501-3C non-profit entity established under the fiscal sponsorship of Friends of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, checks should be made to Friends of the Bosque and sent to: RioFest Environmental Film Festival, P.O. Box 508, Socorro, NM 87801.

For more information on the RioFest Environmental Film Festival, visit the RioFest Web site at www.riofilmfest.com.

Contact T.S. Last