Jeff Orlowski: Chasing Ice
This stunning film is a very appealing story about glaciers that are melting globally. A well-known photographer James Balog who has photographed nature (for National Geographic among others) for many years, had a deep concern of glaciers melting way faster than one could expect or even imagine. He created a team of photographers, filmmakers and technicians to start a project called Extreme Ice Survey. This team installed more than 50 cameras in Iceland, Greenland, Alaska and Montana in order to photograph glaciers that are constantly dissolving. Cameras were programmed to take a picture every hour throughout more than three years of time and time-lapses, in Chasing Ice coming together as horrifying, stunning footage.
The whole journey was portrayed in a very adventurous manner. Beautifully presented extreme changes that occurred during recent years helped to reveal the great damage that has been caused by us. Pictures ‘before’ and ‘after’ are nothing less but shocking. Moreover, James backed these pictures up with factual information. He is an activist and tries to visit as many conferences as possible that deal with climate change (one of them was COP15) in order to bring his study to masses as an eye opening experience.
The film is very convincing but must be seen on a big screen to strengthen its beautiful nature. Constantly changing landscape shapes, vivid colors and irrepressible power of melting glaciers in this wonderfully crafted film, must be seen and cannot impress the same way when retold.
USA, 2011, 75 mins. Seen at Sundance 2012
http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/national-geo-channel-buys-sundance-docu-chasing-ice/#more-221041
