Just in time for Thanksgiving tables where politics reluctantly come up, the Chasing Ice trailer provides some excellent visual proof for those in the world that still doubt that the world is getting warmer. Whether or not you can convince them that humans are at fault is another issue, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could at least agree that science is a better starting point than “how Uncle Melbert’s knee feels when it’s about to rain”?
Sorry, Uncle Melbert, but you might want to check this out.
This documentary is a life-and-camera-endangering exercise that follows nature photographer James Balog complete the arduous task of placing time-lapse equipment in some of the harshest environmental conditions on the planet. His goal? Capturing footage of melting glaciers. The resulting shots are nothing short of awe-inspiring. There is a massive raw power in these mammoths disappearing from the landscape, and director Jeff Orlowski also captures Balog’s obsessive story – one that has made a lot of festival rounds to a huge pile of acclaim.
Check out the stunning trailer for yourself:
Vice has an excellent audience Q&A with the filmmaker and Balog where they share their reasons for undertaking the task.
“Yes, the science community is really interesting because they have a huge amount of knowledge,” said Balog. “You cannot believe what the specialists in these various fields know. You go to these science meetings and you sit there in rooms like this and you listen to presentations. They know a thousand times more information about amazing world-changing events than ever gets out into the public awareness. So the challenge is to be able to kind of filter it. To take all of that information, run it through some kind of funnel, and way down at the bottom of that funnel be able to turn it into something that we can make new stories and good pictures out of.
That’s the real problem. And part of that problem is to make the story of what they’re doing simple. And you spend a lot of time to work with them to squeeze down a lot of complexity into something that’s a really clear, straightforward narrative thread that’s still accurate to the intentions that they have. That was the real creative challenge to get all of that right, and this film has been vetted by many many scientists over and over again to tweak the nuances and get everything just right.”
Of course global warming is a difficult issue to grasp considering the largeness of its scale and the future-looking consequences for ignoring it. As a solution, Chasing Ice presents the evidence and the danger in a way that even the shortest of attention spans can grasp.
It’s in limited theaters right now.
Related Topics: Documentary
