Most doctoral students have their thesis read by around five people, or if they're lucky, a slightly wider audience of peers in their specialty. But one demanding class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is changing that. The students in this class are making movies.

Tales of Planet Earth is a three-day environmental film festival beginning Friday that will air seven short films created by UW students along with more than 30 professional films over the weekend. The brainchild of UW professor Gregg Mitman and environmental filmmaker Judith Helfand (who directed "Blue Vinyl" and "Everything's Cool"), the festival is both about the movies and connecting global environmental issues to things happening locally in Wisconsin.

The filmmakers and festival producers are striving to redefine our conception of what is an environmental issue -- expanding it to include themes of social justice, the built environment and one of our biggest interactions with the environment: food production.

In addition to the film production class, other students are taking a community engagement class where they partner with local groups that address issues of social justice, conservation and local food. For their part in the festival, these students have organized events across Madison associated with the films to raise awareness and engage community members, like a meet-and-greet with wild animal rehabilitators from the Four Lakes Wildlife Center and a local foods cooking demo for kids at a Troy Gardens.

The Tales of Planet Earth festival opens with the student films Friday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. at the Wisconsin Union Theatre, 800 Langdon St. The student films will then be sprinkled throughout the festival, serving as opening to acts to some of the professional films.

100% Wisconsin cheese

Kevin Gibbons is working toward his doctorate in environmental studies, and wrote his master's thesis on Lake Victoria fisheries management in Uganda. But for his film, he investigated a more local commodity chain: how milk goes from the cow to cheese.

"I chose cheese because it's this icon of Wisconsin," he said. Nowadays, "the majority of dairy workers are Latino, and I use my film to throw that out there… because the way we identify with the cultural icon is a bit dishonest in some ways."

The film isn't trying to suggest victimization, Gibbons said.

"In my opinion these Mexican workers are the heroes of our milk," he said.

A new kind of foodie

Foodies are often thought of as those who can afford to buy organic and locally grown produce; not formerly homeless people. But a local non-profit called Porchlight has trained and now employs six formerly homeless staff to make various food products like jam, sauerkraut, pickled beets, pasta sauce and baked goods using ingredients from local farmers.

"I really like what they do because it takes the local food things a step farther to include people who aren't generally included in food movements by providing job training," said Catherine Willis, a student in the community engagement class who has succeeded in getting a handful of local businesses to serve Porchlight's food in their establishments. Willis is working towards her Ph.D. in sociology, and said she wants her research projects to stem from the needs of the communities she works with.

College student Jesse Mursky-Fuller from the film production class also partnered with Porchlight, and made a short film documenting one Chi Omega sorority sister, Jessica Halpern, and her efforts to convince twelve different sororities to buy the local products. The piece takes a light-hearted air, as the camera follows Halpern and her tray of crackers from sales pitch to sales pitch. It's not just about buying local food, she explains, it's creating jobs for workers who otherwise wouldn't have a chance to be in the food industry.

Holy common ground

For these academics' first forays into film, they're finding it to be a powerful, far-reaching tool.

"There's something almost kind of radical about using a medium of film, especially in a discipline that's so traditional like history of science," said Meridith Beck Sayre, a doctoral candidate in that department.

Beck Sayre's film takes a different look at people's connections to the land, through the eyes of a 77-year-old Wisconsinite named Frank Shadewald. Shadewald is of Irish and German heritage, he's a Korean war vet and retired engineer and farmer, and his mission is to preserve the Ho Chunk effigy mounds he discovered on his land.

"He doesn't consider himself a religious or spiritual person," said Beck Sayre, "but there's a deep sensitivity to him."

When Shadewald shared his findings of the effigy mounds -- earthen mounds shaped like animals that are sacred to many American Indian people -- white Wisconsinites and Ho Chunk Nation members alike were interested in preserving the historical find. But no preservation organization has purchased the land, and Shadewald worries it could land in the hands of developers.

Beck Sayre's short film takes the viewer on a quiet walk through the trails Shadewald carved in the land, and onto the hill dubbed "Frank's hill," where the mounds rest.

"In making films you can tell reasonably complex stories without a lot of words," she said. And with a few simple lines from one dedicated man, she shows how this piece of Wisconsin history draws together a wide array of people.

"The part I really love is that it's not a sad story of cultural loss, it's a story of preservation, of various people in a community recognizing the value and importance of place for a number of different cultures," she said.

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