MOVIE REVIEW: "Glacial Balance": Documentary on Human Effects of Climate Change

on Mountain Forum: http://www.mtnforum.org/content/glacial-balance-documentary-human-effects-climate-change

Ethan Steinman, cinematographer, prepared a few new trailers for his film Glacial Balance.

As a means of teaching the general public about climate change through the relationship of Andeans to their nearby glaciers, and the subsequent worldwide effects that will be felt.

His goal with the film was for it to be a learning tool and to spark a debate to ultimately instigate change in climate change policy.

The film is a country-by-country journey along the spine of the Andes, providing a narrative of climate change impacts on communities.

It addresses Latin American geography with regards to the effects of climate change that are being faced today, dealing with aspects of Andeans' reality as they work to mitigate the effects of climate change.

The trailers and more info on the film HERE  (Available for educational and personal use)

MOVIE REVIEW: "Chasing Ice" Bewitches Eyes But Won't Change Minds

by Ann McCulloch, Deakin University

The climate change hole we’ve dug. EPA/Baard Ness

Science seems to be failing to change the minds of those who are sceptical about the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

Chasing Ice - a film by Jeff Orlowski, playing in Australia currently - tries instead to change minds through dramatic images.

The aim is laudable, and the film beautiful, but the message narrowly misses the mark.

Central to this film is the belief that we cannot divorce civilisation from nature.

This vision is rendered in James Balog’s extraordinary photographs of ice and his compilation of video footage of glaciers melting at an unnatural rate. The film argues that global warming promises to transform sublime beauty to sublime horror.

Chasing Ice is a significant film. It is exciting to the mind and visual imagination of anyone who accepts climate change as a reality. But its narrative is not riveting, and probably not persuasive to most climate change sceptics.

The film tells the story of evidence overwhelming disbelief: once, Balog himself did not take climate change seriously. But in his fascination with photographing ice he found that when he returned to many glaciers they were receding at a remarkable rate.

He was shocked at what he saw. He had not believed that human beings had the power to bring about changes of this magnitude. To make his findings public, he and his team placed 30 video cameras in Greenland, Alaska, Montana and Iceland.

The intention was not only to “record a powerful piece of history unfolding”, but also to provide visual evidence to a public that does not want to hear statistics.

His video footage does indeed show glaciers coming to an end; it shows how in a two year period physical features of glaciers disappearing, breaking apart, and literally melting into the sea. Chasing Ice’s limitations as an argument are due to its diluted narrative.

The film should have focused on how the video evidence, taken over a period of two years, demonstrates the fact of climate change. Instead there are three narratives, two of which should have fed the main thesis rather than vied for attention.

Balog’s beautiful images of ice, and the drama of his battling obstacles against the odds in securing his evidence, could have been woven into the film more successfully: cameras breaking, problems with the timer, batteries exploding and foxes eating into cables, cables becoming dislodged and buried in snow and Balog’s problems with his knees could not compete with the film’s prime message.

These story lines deflect attention away from the main argument: the significance of the unusual calving of glaciers. Successfully visualising this calving is of supreme importance.

Science education to date has failed to communicate the urgency of the need to counteract climate change: maybe art can fill the gap.

The film opens with a sequence of sceptics proclaiming climate change is based on an invalid argument, nonsensical and exaggerated. I expected the film would subvert this disbelief (and of course in many ways it does).

So why do I harbour reservations about this film? It will gain instant support from those already persuaded that climate change is real. But I was disappointed the film did not confront the climate change deniers with their findings.

When we see James Balog introduced to a forum of interested parties, I doubt there were any sceptics in the audience. There was a sense of converting the converts.


The film would have been more powerful if disbelievers had an opportunity to voice their objections. Certainly the film predicted the opposition and provided charts and graphs “proving” that changes in glaciers could not be explained by natural causes.

There was the canny inclusion of an insurance broker whose business offered policies allowing people to insure against the impact of climate change. He declared himself an ex-climate change sceptic who now, after having to do the research for business reasons, was a “believer”.

Imagine how provocative it would have been to include in this film a debate between experts with conflicting views.

But this is a film not to be missed - mostly because of Balog’s obsession with ice and they way his love of photographing its sublime beauty alerted him as if, by chance, to physical changes in the glaciers.

In the first instance he celebrated the beauty of ice; his veneration of nature led him to the awareness that our civilisation was destroying its own source of being.

Balog’s photographs are works of art and they are breathtaking. The film is a powerful tool for changing perceptions, perceptions which science education has failed to shift. Chasing Ice’s visualisation of the problem is a means of overcoming disinterest and ignorance.

I do, though, hope for a sequel in which disbelievers are written into the script. It would be fascinating to observe their stance and perhaps even witness a conversion.

Ann McCulloch does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.


This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

MOVIE REVIEW: New Film by Josh Fox - The Sky Is Pink

Tower for drilling horizontally into the Marcellus Shale Formation for natural gas, from Pennsylvania Route 118 in eastern Moreland Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Alexandra Brunel

I've just seen Josh Fox's June 2012 short film (URL at the end) about the oil and gas fracking industries' fierce lobbying to open up the New York City watershed to high-pressure gas extraction.

Using both personal and scientific arguments, delivered in a powerful, quietly emotive voice, Josh shows us how these industries spend millions on PR, and on "lobbying" that some might think looks a tiny bit like bribery, to convince Americans to trust them with the power to pollute our lands and water sources for short-term financial gain.

The risks, in brief

The fracking process introduces a ferociously toxic chemical cocktail into the ground. All these chemicals must travel, under pressure, through the crumbling rock and through the layers we get our water from, via unreliable and possibly short-lived concrete casings with steel liners.

Each well requires millions of gallons of water to complete, much of which, afterward, permanently, becomes toxic waste. Some of this is carried away by road but in many areas it's cheaper to leave it deep in the ground under our feet. And they do.

Longer-term losses


I grew up in Central New York - in Madison County, a region of small farms and towns - areas hit hard by the recent financial crises. People are scared about the future, and the offer of thousands of dollars for the rights to lease your under-used agricultural land must seem like manna from heaven if you're about to lose your home.

But in the medium term, the leasing companies will ensure that these homes will be worse than lost. If we don't halt fracking, we'll lose our landscape to ugly, poorly regulated industrial development, and we'll lose clean water and air. We'll even make the rock itself toxic. None of these bode well for the health or happiness of our children and their descendents.

If you're not furious already, here's one final point: why are these companies willing to pay so much for the leases? The answer is this: they're securing a chunk of our future earnings. As long as we depend on fossil fuels, every family has to pay whatever price the industry demands. Every year, this increases. In the UK, gas prices have risen by 40% in three years.

My home town

As a child I played on the Marcellus shale. I learned first-hand how it crumbles and fractures, harbours fossils and secrets. Sweet drinking water came from shallow wells because the impermeable shale underlies the earth at only a few meters' depth.

Deep snows fall here. Melt-water comes off the hills, soaks the upper layers of soil, and drains off the surface of the shale into rivers, streams and lakes that feed livestock, crops, and families.

I grew up in Madison County, north and west of the area they're talking about in this new film. But look at the map of 2010 leases already under consideration or arranged by that year, in my home county.

Note how, by 2010, the threats this film discusses had already crept north from Pennsylvania, where - unlike New York, so far - regulations and controls have - to some extent - limited their reach.

And note especially wells already marked as "abandoned" - a worry, when Josh and his experts show us in this movie that it's possible or even likely that 50% of new wells will fail within thirty years.

PR and The Sky Is Pink: a historical perspective

In 1926, the great American political reformer Upton Sinclair published a novel, Oil!, about the oil industry and how it, and the financial institutions, took control of the media and politics of the period to push through oil development worldwide.

It's a fascinating, sympathetic and surprisingly modern book that lays bare how Americans were persuaded to elect those who had only their own interests at heart. These interests became more and more powerful as the century unfolded. It's arguable that they're even more powerful now.

Sinclair was not one for easy answers. He wrote at a time of huge political turmoil worldwide, and although he was sympathetic to reform, he was alert to propaganda and human weakness, whatever its source.

Disinformation and mis-information is one of the chief tools of power. As Josh shows in this new film, today this pro-fracking crusade has been delivered for management into the hands of PR professionals. In a near-incredible irony of history, we learn that these hands belong to the very same professionals who told us for years that tobacco was harmless, while concealing internal memos that proved otherwise.

Then he shows us some internal memos from the gas companies.

If this new film doesn't put ice in your cocktail, I don't know what will. Do watch it, consider it, and if you're inclined, get involved in opposing this threat before it - literally - undermines our future.

Watch now: The Sky Is Pink

If you live in the UK, please see the Frack Off website for latest news about UK action. More about fracking in my blog about what happened when I decided to go for it, as a writer and environmentalist. And other things. http://sungodsguidetoliteraryfame.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/waging-war-on-real-terror-fracking-is.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alexandra_Brunel
http://EzineArticles.com/?Review:-New-Film-by-Josh-Fox---The-Sky-Is-Pink&id=7137862

MOVIE REVIEW: Carbon Nation – the Movie – Now on DVD and Recommended

The Green Future - Image by Gilderic (Recovering) via Flickrby Glen Hiemstra, on the Futurist blog: http://www.futurist.com

Carbon Nation is now available on DVD and on most download and On Demand sites. This important, entertaining and hopeful documentary, produced by Peter Byck, is highly recommended by us here at Futurist.com. Read the press release here. Learn how to order the film here.

I saw Carbon Nation this spring when Boeing sponsored a premier here in Seattle, and we blogged at that time that it would be come the “new must see film on our common future.” In the movie Peter travels throughout the country documenting amazing stories of individuals and companies who are creating the next clean and low-carbon energy future. If you see climate change as a problem, or if you don’t but would like cleaner and cheaper energy anyway, this film tells you how it can be done, and is already being done.

We encourage you to buy the DVD, and what we are really recommending is that companies, educational institutions, and conference events consider a bulk purchase of DVD’s for use as a premium, an educational asset, or strategic planning tool. Carbon Nation would be terrific for any of those uses, and I have already begun talking with one speaking event I am doing about the possibility of a purchase and give-away of the DVD to those in attendance.

To read more, go to: http://www.futurist.com/2011/08/02/carbon-nation-the-movie-now-on-dvd-and-recommended-2/