CINECO is Edinburgh’s very first and free environmental film festival, running in and around the University until the end of November. As an independent student initiative, it was funded by one of the University’s Small Project Grants. So far four screenings have been held and seven more are still to come.

Why do people come to watch environmental films? How do they affect the viewer?

We gathered a few answers after our last screening, Altiplano: "...to inform and motivate myself", "...to see something beautiful", "...to get inspired, to get informed, to get together." Environmental films can, naturally, be as aesthetic, artistic, thrilling or humorous as any other film. Additionally, they can inform and raise awareness on certain issues. But more importantly, they can have a strong inspiring and motivating force on viewers, possibly more than any other medium.

Cineco’s final screening DIVE! is a documentary made by a "dumpster diver"/"skipper" in L.A. who literally lives of American waste and then decides to grab a camera and dive into the waste problem itself. Eating Alaska and DIVE proves that straight-forward, personal documentaries in which you enter both the head and world of the film maker, can be really powerful.

Our second screening, Beyond the Tipping Point by the young academic Stefan Skrimshire is a more "intellectual documentary": the story unfolds like an essay, answering questions on the foundations of action and inaction towards tackling climate change.

Where Skrimshire wonders why we act or not act, our third documentary Just Do It has a clear motivational message: just do it, get off your arse and change the world! The film shows the world of climate activists in the UK and makes you want to run out of the theatre and join the movement.

The next documentary coming up is Mean Sea Level which follows an Indian family threatened by rising sea levels. The film does what a documentary can do very well: showing how global, abstract forces - like climate change - impact real-life people.

Then there’s Our Daily Bread, which is quite a different type of documentary all together. There’s no speech, only shots of different methods of food production edited together in a slow mesmerising rhythm of the clanking of machinery. Full-frontally, you’re confronted with industrial food production and high-tech farming - and you cannot look away. Using the "show, don’t tell" method, the film leaves you to form your own opinion.

Finally documentary-wise, the Age of Stupid needs mentioning, launched last year but already an environmental classic. The film combines documentary, drama and animation, telling of the only man left in the devastated world of 2055. He looks back at archive footage of the year 2008, asking: "Why didn’t we stop climate change when we still had the chance?" This format forces you to look with glasses of the future at what we’re actually doing today.

But what about environmental dramas? Last week, we showed Altiplano, a film about a Peruvian community in the Andes affected by industrial giants. Although based on real events, the film is poetic, aesthetic, mystic and anchored in spirituality.

Director Jessica Woodsworth asked us to prepare the audience to look upon the film as if it were a piece of art or a dance performance. She believes a film is through "the tension within and between its images" able to leave "an indelible mark etched on the soul of the viewer". Whether this is true, you’ll have to see for yourself, but fact is that this screening evoked the most powerful responses from the audience so far. People felt "humbled" and "bombed away" and when we asked if watching this film made them feel connected and/or responsible for people on the other side of the world, the answer was an unanimous yes.

Thursday the 28th of October, we’ll be discussing the motivational force of environmental documentaries and dramas further during our event "Climate change at the Movies", as part of Edinburgh University’s Our Impact Week. This panel debate will ask the question of whether film has or can in the future contribute to the UN Millenium Development Goal of ‘Ensuring Environmental Sustainability’.

But CINECO wishes not only to inspire and motivate people through film, but take it a step further and provide avenues for actions after the film. We work closely together with existing societies and initiatives within the University and beyond, and combine our screenings with workshops, discussions and Q&A’s. Bringing people together through film and highlighting the interconnectedness of each of us with the environmental challenges that face us is also an important aspect of the festival: for example, during the Faith & Environment event on the 17th of November, students, religious communities and local religious leaders will come together to discuss the connection between faith and environment. Stay tuned!