Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital (https://dceff.org/) started almost 30 years ago in Washington, DC. And it is still going strong.

This year’s 29th edition of the festival took place in March but you can still watch many of the films on their website. There’s over 300 films available there and most of them are short, some as short as just around 5 mins, but there are also features films around an hour and a half or even two hours long. They cover 26 different topics, from Food & Agriculture, through Wildlife and Arts, to History and Climate Change. You can choose by the topic or the provider. Today I want to talk about two of them from the last year’s edition of the festival — ‘The Dog Doc’ and ‘The Game Changers’.

‘The Dog Doc’ documentary is about Dr. Marty Goldstein who incorporated holistic medicine into his veterinarian practice. His lifelong experience proves that the best thing a doctor can do for an animal is to strengthen the immune system and let the body heal itself. It doesn’t always heal the disease, especially when it’s already very advanced, but at least it improves the quality of life and often prolongs it. Unfortunately his approach is not well received by the veterinarian community, even though it looks like things finally start to change.

The main cause of animal diseases nowadays is the same as it is in the case of humans — food. It has been genetically modified and doesn’t provide the necessary nutrition. And just like in the case of humans, doctors recommends mostly chemotherapy and radiation but Dr. Marty Goldstein uses supplements and cryotherapy. If it is working for animals, maybe we should be doing the same for humans? We should at least start asking these questions…

‘The Game Changers’ shows us the journey of combatives expert James Wilks who decided to look for the best diet for the athletes. To his own surprise he realized that vegan plant based diet is the best and explains why it is so. I already decided to switch to the plant based diet before I watched the film but it still answered some of my remaining questions. For example, I knew I had to buy vitamin B-12 supplement but I didn’t know why I couldn’t get it from natural foods, just like all the other vitamins. Apparently you should be taking it even if you eat meat.

Similarly to many other things, it looks like we do things because of the advertisement we have been exposed to for decades. We were told that meat and animal products are good for us and that they do not affect our health negatively or cause cancer. Remember when tobacco companies were telling us that smoking doesn’t cause cancer either? And they would even sponsor research to prove it. Well, it seems like it’s the same old story over and over again. When are we finally going to learn?