River of Eden

Raised in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, where he still lives, frequent Mountainfilm guest Pete McBride is an accomplished photographer and filmmaker with a strong affinity for rivers. His portrait of the Colorado River in distress, Chasing Water, made a strong impression at Mountainfilm in 2011. This year, he tells a story of hope by way of preservation of a far less famous river: the upper Navua in Fiji, sometimes known as the River of Eden or the tropical Grand Canyon. While McBride says in his narration that the river’s beauty is “indescribable,” he provides a powerful testimonial for it on film and shows that sometimes conservation does win out over resource extraction.