The awareness of the vulnerability of mankind is growing apace.
Last Thursday, I wrote a piece called The year of separation.
Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice Survey
When researching material for that article, I came across the official trailer for the film Chasing Ice. The fact that this film is being shown in cinemas and movie theaters across the world is highly relevant.
Because it demonstrates that there is a public appetite for such a film otherwise it would never had made it as a film project.
But not only that, read some of the reviews mentioned on the Chasing Ice website.
From The Guardian newspaper:
- The Guardian, Thursday 13 December 2012 17.20 EST
Jeff Orlowski’s documentary begins as a straightforward biographical profile, before shifting up into something more urgent, impassioned and compelling. Its subject, James Balog, is a photographer who goes to extremes to prove the existence of global warming: his latest expedition involves descending Arctic cliff faces to fit time-lapse cameras with which to monitor glacial erosion.
The review concludes, thus:
If any film can convert the climate-change sceptics, Chasing Ice would be it: here, seeing really is believing.
Then there is the review in The Observer newspaper:
The Observer, Saturday 15 December 2012
Jeff Orlowski’s first-rate documentary begins with complacently smug anti-global-warming clips from Fox News and from the owner of America’s weather channel. It then introduces the persuasive environmentalist James Balog, a celebrated photographer working for National Geographic, who became fascinated with what glaciers can teach us about our changing planet.
In 2007 he set up the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), a well-funded project to monitor glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Montana, the Alps, Canada and Bolivia, and the results – photographed using state-of-the-art time-lapse cameras – are sensational in their beauty, terror and the irrefutable evidence they provide of the rapidity with which age-old ice packs are melting away. It’s like watching our world disappear.
Let’s come this side of the ‘Pond’. Here’s a review in The Kansas City Star:
BY MICHAEL O’SULLIVAN
The Washington Post
“Chasing Ice” aims to accomplish, with pictures, what all the hot air that has been generated on the subject of global warming hasn’t been able to do: make a difference.
The documentary by Jeff Orlowski follows nature photographer James Balog as he documents melting glaciers, beginning in 2007, in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland and Montana. Called the Extreme Ice Survey, the project works like this: Balog sets up still cameras that have been programmed to take a picture, once every hour, for three years, of the same glacier from a fixed spot.
Concluding:
“Chasing Ice” will make an impact, that’s for sure. Whether it can be said to have been effective remains to be seen. This portrait of a man on a mission moves us, not by showing us what we’ve already lost, but what’s still at stake.
My final dip into the review pot is from America Magazine – The National Catholic Review.
The Cold Hard Truth
The bracing ‘Chasing Ice’
Anyone with a desire to preserve our planet has no choice but to see Chasing Ice, the gorgeous, inventive documentary released last month. As of this writing it has been shown to selected audiences but has yet to reach the popularity of a film like “An Inconvenient Truth.” Give it time, however, and hopefully further promotion, because it is truly revelatory. Produced by Paula DuPré Pesmen and Jerry Aronson and directed by Jeff Orlowski, the film is a unique pictorial about global warming, which left me impressed, thoughtful and sad.
Wil Lepkowski closes with these words,
Take the time to see “Chasing Ice,” even if it is not the type of film you would typically see. These are not typical times. We must begin to act. In the wake of a devastating hurricane on the East Coast of the United States, the United States may finally be taking steps to address climate change. Ordinary citizens must take on a greater role too. We cannot dwell on our sadness, but work to provide hope for our children, who will suffer the most if we continue to ignore the disaster on the horizon.
So you get the message!
Here’s that film trailer. And make a note to go to the website of the Extreme Ice Survey and ponder on what you can do to make a difference. That’s the broad ‘you’ by the way. The one that includes you and me and all those on this planet that want to make a difference.
Learning from Dogs 