An educational film about invasive species, created by a mother-daughter team from Mountain View, will soon appear at the visitor centers of national parks around the country.
But audiences here will have a chance to see it this Saturday, when Palo Alto rolls out its green carpet for the first-ever Greenlight Earth Day Film Festival.
The film, “Invaders of the National Parks,” focuses on tamarisk, or salt cedar, a weed that has taken over parts of Utah’s Arches National Park and damages the natural habitat.
Patricia Smith, a Mountain View resident, wrote the script for the film that her daughter, Liz, produced and directed. Liz is a graduate of St. Francis High School and now resides in Washington, D.C., where she works as a producer for NASA while completing a science filmmaking degree.
Liz asked her mom to write the script for “Invaders” because of her background in journalism.
“She’s very talented and everything I learned about writing came from her,” Liz said. “We’re a close knit family and it was our first opportunity to work together, finally.”
Patricia, who currently works as program director at the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford, said developing a documentary script is much like writing news stories.
“In newspaper writing, you have to get right to the point. It’s the same with script writing. You have to say it and move on,” she said.
The film took about two years to complete, and Patricia decided to submit “Invaders” to the Palo Alto film festival.
“It was just a perfect fit,” Patricia said.
Funded by the National Park Service, Liz filmed “Invaders” herself, capturing glorious scenery of Arches National Park and interviewing specialists in invasive species.
In the fall, Liz will receive her degree and continue working as a full-time producer for NASA.
In the future, the mother and daughter would like to team up with Liz’s marine biologist brother on a film project.
But for now, they’ll wait and see if their film wins a prize at the Palo Alto festival this Saturday. There’s plenty of competition: “Invaders of the National Parks” is one of 46 entries, and one of 10 in the “open” category.
Middle and high school students could also submit entries, with winners taking home $5,000 worth of prizes that will be awarded to the top three winners in the middle school, high school and open (no age limit) categories.
