About Earth Cinema Circle

About Us & Contact Info

"Increasing awareness of environmental films that educate, entertain and inspire action that makes a difference"

Earth Cinema Circle grew out of two neighbors meeting each other for the first time. Gay Hendricks and Rick Ridgeway both live in Ojai, California, a small town about 12 miles inland from the southern California coast just south of Santa Barbara. Gay and his wife Kathlyn are well-know psychologists. Gay has written over 25 books, including the best-sellers Conscious Living and Conscious Loving. He and Kathlyn are founders of the Hendricks Institute that teaches the core skills of conscious living. Rick is also an author who has written six books about adventure, exploration and environmental issues, including the widely read Seven Summits, Below Another Sky and Shadow of Kilimanjaro. He has also directed or produced over 30 television documentaries on the same topics.

When Gay and Rick first met, Gay told him that in addition to his books and the Institute, he already had experience with DVD clubs, as Gay was a founder of a subscription DVD club called Spiritual Cinema Circle.  Gay explained that the service filled a need offering award-winning, quality films that inspired viewers with the joys of life’s potentials.  “They’re the kind of films that seldom get picked up by Hollywood,” Gay told Rick, “and unless you go to lots of film festivals, you never get to see them.  So Spiritual Cinema Circle is great for people who love uplifting movies, and it’s great for the filmmakers who otherwise have a hard time getting their films distributed.”

Gay told Rick that Spiritual Cinema Circle was only three years old, but the DVD club already had subscribers in over 80 countries.  That night Rick thought more about what Gay had told him.  Rick also liked to attend film festivals.  Each year he went to several that specialized in films about the outdoors, nature, wildlife, and environmental topics and issues.  He had friends who went to even more:  dozens of festivals across the U.S., Canada and Europe.  They all had the same report:  they were delighted in how many wonderful films they had seen, because they were the types of movies, documentaries and videos you couldn’t find anywhere outside the festival circuit.

In addition to writing books and producing films, Rick is also a committed environmentalist, and his day job is running the environmental initiatives at the outdoor clothing company Patagonia.  In addition he helps several environmental groups raise funds, design strategy and in general get the word out about their efforts.  The light bulb came on:  use Gay’s success with the Spiritual Cinema Circle to start a DVD club that would allow nature lovers, conservationists, environmentalists and outdoor enthusiasts the opportunity to see the best of all the films that Rick or his friends had seen at the film festivals.

Next day Rick called Gay to see what he thought about the idea of other DVD clubs:  “Interesting you should mention it,” Gay said.  “I’ve been thinking of exactly the same thing.”  Rick was excited because he knew that the service could do more than fill a need for winning a wider audience for films that deserved to be seen.  He knew that perhaps more than any other medium, film had the ability to inspire people to get involved and to take action.  In addition, as a filmmaker himself who was acquainted with many of the people who made the films he saw in the film festivals, he knew that an environmental and nature film club would be an important source of support for them.

By then Spiritual Cinema Circle had joined the Gaiam community of companies, so Gay and Rick partnered with them to launch Earth Cinema Circle in October, 2007.  The mission of Earth Cinema Circle is simple:  “increase awareness of environmental films that educate, entertain and inspire action that makes a difference”.

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