Following the screening of the 89-minute documentary Climate Refugees, there will be a panel discussion including filmmaker Michael Nash and several Bates faculty members. For more information, please call 207-786-6289.

A climate refugee is someone displaced by climatically induced environmental disasters — disasters that result from both gradual and rapid ecological changes. These include increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, fires, mass flooding and tornadoes.

The International Organization for Migration has estimated that climate change would drive a billion people worldwide from their homes in the next four decades, according to Reuters. In 2008, 20 million people became homeless in environmental disasters. The Pentagon now considers climate change a national security risk, and the term “climate wars” has become common currency in Washington, D.C.

Nash traversed the globe for two years capturing the suffering of cultures whose very survival is challenged by effects of global warming. The film depicts the dire circumstances of these climate refugees.

Among the cases examined in the film are the South Pacific’s Tuvalu Islands, threatened with obliteration by rising water levels; drought-affected regions of Sudan; storm-susceptible coastlines of Bangladesh; and rapidly expanding deserts in China that are forcing mass relocations.

Nash was inspired to make the film after reading a study by the United Nations University stating that there are currently more environmental refugees in the world than refugees from political or religious persecution. “I just thought that was crazy,” says Nash.

The film includes testimonials from politicians, scientists, relief organizations and authors who call for new policies and new cooperation to find solutions for this crisis. The United Nations held a private screening of the film for world leaders and scientists at the 2009 Climate Conference in Copenhagen.

Sherri Quinn of National Public Radio called the film “a resounding wake-up call for every human being to go green immediately. It is a must-see film that puts the human soul in the science of climate change.”

Prior to her visit, several of Hinton’s films will be shown in the Keck Classroom. Small Happiness, focusing on the lives of women in China, and China’s Only Child will be shown at 4:10 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28. The Dying Rooms, about the conditions of Shanghai orphanages and Good Fortune, about successful adoptions of Chinese infants by American families, will be shown at 4:10 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 29. These, too, are open to the public and free of charge.

Hinton has produced and directed Hong Kong on Stage (1997), a short film about an avant-garde theater group in Hong Kong on the eve of the 1997 transfer of sovereignty to China and The Gate of Heavenly Peace (1995), a three-hour film about the 1989 Chinese democracy movement. She also has produced and directed Abode of Illusion (1992), First Moon (1991), Stilt Dancers (1981) and One Village in China (1987), a three-part series that includes Small Happiness, To Taste A Hundred Herbs and All Under Heaven. Hinton also produced Acrobats (1997), Chinese Environmental Film Project (1994) and Little Plum (1994).

The Boston Globe described Small Happiness, a hit at the 1985 New Directors/New Films festival at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as a film that “fills the screen with things that are new, illuminating, startling and rooted in humanity.” At the close of this film, Hinton narrates: “As long as a woman must leave her own family, marry into a man’s household and continue his family line, she will be considered a small happiness from the day she is born.”

Hinton’s films have appeared at festivals throughout the world and garnered various prizes. The Gate of Heavenly Peace received the George Foster Peabody Award, the International Critics Prize and the Best Social and Political Documentary Award at the Banff Film Festival.

Hinton has lectured on China and film at MIT and Wellesley and taught Chinese language at Swarthmore. She received a bachelor’s degree in Oriental studies from the University of Pennsylvania and is a doctoral candidate in Chinese art history at Harvard.