It’s not just about saving whales, recycling and hugging trees. One of nine environmental film festivals across the country, the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, now in its second year run by the college, will explore a broader definition of environment and host its largest catalog to date March 30 through April 6.

And unlike other environmental film festivals, which mostly focus on film, this event will feature 26 artists, activists and scholars presenting various art contributions. These include more than 70 films, digital art exhibitions, photography and an art installation in the academic quad. There will also be presentations, master classes and workshops, along with five mini-courses offered in each school.

Previously run by Cornell University’s Center for the Environment, the nine-year-old event will expand this year to include funding and faculty from the six schools and divisions, alumni from around the country and national and international artists and scholars.

Peter Bardaglio, provost and vice president of academic affairs, said he hopes the festival becomes one of the college’s signature events.

“The festival is a great way to send a strong message about our commitment to sustainability and creativity,” he said.

Researching artists and ideas and planning for the festival began early last summer, said Patricia Zimmermann, festival co-director and professor of cinema and photography. She said the festival is moving from an idea of “environment” to “environments.”

“It goes from a notion of thinking about the environment as something you individually do — you try to save trees by not using paper — to something … that is more collective, more collaborative and more political,” Zimmermann said.

Thomas Shevory, festival co-director and chair of the department of politics, said the festival previously primarily showed documentary films about the environment.

The expansion of the ideas incorporated in the festival coincides with the expansion of media included. The college commissioned local landscape artist Mary Zebell to create “Counting,” an art installation made of snow fencing that will cover the grass on the academic quad.

The installation is a special commission to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the college’s Women Direct, the longest- running feminist media series on the East Coast, and is being held in conjunction with FLEFF. The installation, a community art project being built by local volunteers, is also celebrating the move of the festival to its new home at the college.

The snow fencing is made up of 4-foot-tall vertical slats painted black and connected by wiring. Zebell said an angular slat will be nailed to every four slats as a symbol of counting.

“Every night on the news it was like three more dead soldiers in Iraq or another bombing,” Zebell said. “It’s just this whole obsession with counting.”

The slats represent those who have died in the Iraq war, in the tsunami in South East Asia, in Hurricane Katrina, in the earthquake in Pakistan and from AIDS. Slats with the names of Iraqi civilian casualties will be in bunches in the Handwerker Gallery. Zebell said the fencing looks like graves, and the wiring looks like barbwire.

“They evoke war, constraint and conflict,” she said.

Laura Kissel ’91, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina, will screen her nonfiction essay documentary, “Cabin Field,” as well as teach a master class on the process of creating it.

The film examines a cotton field in rural Georgia and the relationships landowners and workers have toward the land. Kissel said her film looks at the way environment is constantly shaped by human activity.

“And when you do that, what you come to see is how our society is structured and questions about race and class rise to the surface,” she said.

Kissel’s film will be shown at Cinemapolis, which has teamed up with Fall Creek. The management of Lynne Cohen and Rich Szanyi will provide 35 mm projectors from March 31 through April 2, showing about 20 films and featuring filmmakers and guests. Cohen said the festival gives them a chance to get more creative with their booking.

“We get to give Ithaca a chance to see films that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to see,” she said.

About 20 pieces of Internet art from around the world will be featured online, on the plasma screens throughout campus and in a digital salon held in Park 220.

“It looks at digital environments and how they rethink the relationship between nature and technology,” Zimmermann said.

Serving as a pre-festival performance March 27, “Trafficking in the Archives” will feature archival films, including 1922’s “Toll of the Sea,” all screened with improvised music by Billy Cote, the Piano Creeps and Mary Lorson, who is a singer for local rock group Saint Low and a former student in the ’80s. The performance examines how early cinema documents the effect humans in search of love and money have on the environment.

The event, curated by Dale Hudson, assistant professor of cinema and photography, and Lisa Patti, lecturer of cinema and photography, is part of the four-year-old Onward Project, a research and performance initiative at the college.

Hudson said they are replicating the diverse film experience that pre-1930s’ audiences witnessed before the arrival of sound. Standardization came with sound, so everyone listens to the same soundtrack, he said.

Zimmermann said the purpose of the festival is to “take the lid off ideas” and encourage conversations in the community.

“Festival-goers will navigate these different events in different ways, making their own intellectual and artistic connections,” she said.

For a schedule of events and ticket prices, visit www.ithaca.edu/ fleff.