Calving Glaciers
Environment
Calving Glaciers (Greenland)
The sudden breaking off of massive ice chunks from the edge of a glacier is an extraordinary sight.
In our time of global warning, it is also an alarming one: a clear indication that we are heating up the planet at an alarming rate.
In this reel are views of the Eqi Glacier in West Greenland, the most frequently calving glacier, as well as aerial views of the Jakobshavn glacier, one of the fastest shrinking glaciers and the most productive of icebergs in the world.
This massive chunk of ice covering Greenland, the biggest island on the planet, accounts for around 10 percent of the frozen freshwater on Earth.
If all that were to melt, it could raise global sea levels more than 20 feet.
Music by Jeff Trueman (Gravity Sounds).
EQI & Jakobshavn glaciers
West Greenland
2013
HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 10’44”
Climate Change Views
Excerpt of INUIT LANDS The Melting Point
Interview of Jason Box
Copenhagen, Denmark
2014
HD 1920
Reel Duration: 1’59”
Jason Box American, lives in Copenhagen
Jason Eric Box is professor in glaciology at the Geological survey of Denmark and Greenland.
Jason Box is an important publisher in the space: for five consecutive years (2008-2012) he was the lead author of the Greenland section of NOAA’s annual State of the Climate report.
He also was a contributing author to the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications focused on ice climate interactions.
He is also one of the members of the team doing field work for the Extreme Ice Survey and has led the Dark Snow Project, the first Internet crowd-funded Arctic expedition.
He has made more than 20 expeditions to Greenland since 1994, has spent more than one year on Greenland ice as a result of these expeditions.
Excerpt of INUIT LANDS The Melting Point
Interview of Minik Rosing
Copenhagen Denmark
2014
HD 1920
Reel Duration: 2’36”
Minik Rosing, Inuit Native. lives in Copenhagen
Minik Rosing, an Inuit Native, is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Biology at SDU and Professor at Geological Museum and Natural History Museum at University of Copenhagen.
Professor Minik Rosing is also a well-known keynote speaker and author of several books:
“The Journey to the Morning of the Times” (2018)
“My Childhood in Greenland” (2016)
“Alicja Kwade: In Aporie” (2019)
“The World Picture” (2008) with Per Kirkeby and a myriad of scientific articles.
He was recently awarded with one of Denmark’s largest communication prizes: Svend Bergsøe Foundation’s Intermediary Prize of DKK 100,000.
Professor Minik Rosing was one of the leaders of the Galathea 3 Expedition. He is the man behind the analysis of Isua sediment, pointing out that photosynthesis already took place 3.7 billion years ago.
USA California
Drought and Fires Impacts (California)
Drought
California, USA
2015
HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 7’22”
Water runs our world and it has been taken for granted especially in the American land of plenty and in particular in the American West, until a couple of decades ago.
In this reel, the parched, dusty landscape of Central California is dotted with billboards along its highways warning of forest fires like they were the coming apocalypse.
“Wildfire is coming. Are you ready?”
Trucks and trailers barrel past the foreboding signs. No one cares to stop long enough to survey the dry bleakness that has overtaken farms, grazing land, and now bumps up against trailer parks and suburban ranch homes.
This 7 years drought is unlike any seen before in the region.
These footage were taken in 2015.
Music by Jeff Trueman (Gravity Sounds)
Fires
California, USA
2015
HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 6’22”
In September 2015, wild fires burnt across Northern and Central California.
This reel from 2015 captures people from the Mountain Range area in Central California as they return to their homes and businesses to assess the fire damage.
Solar & Wind (California)
Solar & Wind
Nevada, California. USA
2015
HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 9’36”
Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a concentrated solar thermal plant in the California Mojave Desert, 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas, with a gross capacity of 392 megawatts. The facility formally opened on February 13, 2014, and it is currently the world’s largest solar thermal power station.
Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm is one of the first large-scale wind farms installed in the U.S.
This area hosts a multitude of wind farms, comprising one of California’s largest wind resource areas.
These initiatives and other great ideas are helping to decentralize the power grid and reduced its carbon footprint. And the pace of change is accelerating worldwide.
Imperial Valley (California)
Imperial Valley
California central
2015
HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 7′ 02″
The Imperial Valley, intensively irrigated part of the Colorado Desert, mainly in Imperial county, southern California, extends southward for 50 miles from the southern end of the Salton Sea into Mexico. Part of a trough stretching from the Coachella Valley to the Gulf of California, it is almost entirely below sea level,—235 feet below at the edge of the Salton Sea.
Its hot desert climate is characterized by daily temperature extremes.
Development of the region languished until the completion of Hoover Dam in 1935 and the All-American Canal in 1940 featured at the end of this reel (with Glenn Canyon Dam).
The valley, with some 3,000 miles (5,000 km) of irrigation canals, contains about 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) of cultivated land. Products include truck crops, alfalfa, cotton, sugar beets, and livestock. El Centro, Brawley, and Calexico are regional commercial centres, as is Mexicali, Mexico.
Global world
Global World
India, China, USA, Greenland, Jordan, Syria.
2002- 2016
HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 23’04”
A random selection and combination of footage shot in different parts of the world (including India, China, the Middle East and the USA), between 2004 and 2016 make up this reel. The idea is to evoke the Global World and the subsequent disparity of economic experiences and impacts that our humanity faces today.
From the slums of Mumbai (Bombay) to the new high rise buildings in China, through ships and cargo tankers, and to our imminent climate change challenges, the other side of the global economy emerges on screen when assembled next to each other.
Where are we going from here?
West Bengal /China
Lohachara Island. West Bengal, INDIA
Lohachara Island
West Bengal, India
2016
HD 1080p
Reel Duration: 23′ 42”
All around the globe sea levels are rising, providing a further reminder of global connectedness.
This reel was shot in West Bengal (India) near the Lohachara Island in March 2016.
West Bengal is a state situated in the eastern part of India, which shares its international border with Bangladesh, apart from Nepal and Bhutan.
Lohachara Island is located on the Hooghly River and is part of the Sundarban delta in the Sundarban National Park.
6,000 people once lived here and it is now uninhabitable.
The loss of land has created thousands of displaced people in the area who were forced to move to the mainland.
There are multiple causes of these disappearing islands in the delta, including sea-level rise, coastal erosion, cyclones, mangrove destruction and coastal flooding.
The loss of land has created thousands of displaced people in the area who were forced to move to the mainland.
There are multiple causes of these disappearing islands in the delta, including sea-level rise, coastal erosion, cyclones mangrove destruction and coastal flooding.
The Three Gorges Dam (China)
The Ghosts of the Three Gorges (excerpt)
China
2008
Standard Definition 720p.
Reel duration: 3’30”
This footage of the Three Gorges was shot during my first travels in the South West of China on the Yang Tse River from Wuhan to Chongking.
This is an excerpt of “The Ghosts of the three Gorges”
26′ documentary, completed in the summer of 2008.
The voice over was added later on, for a travelogue film festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2008.
I cared much more about the visuals and the story underneath.
This latter influenced my work related to Chinese policies not just in Tibet but also in the entire Western part of China.
NEPAL
RAINHARVEST
RAINHARVEST
Nepal
2001
Standard Definition 720p.
Reel duration: 12’15”
Rain harvest 26’ film was a commission from the NGO ICIMOD based in Kathmandu.
It is difficult to think that water would be an issue in countries like Nepal who has some of the highest mountains ranges in the world and the most snowy peaks of the Himalayas.
But it is.
There too, the glaciers are shrinking, and the amount of water available at the foothills is receding with an increasingly drier tropical climate.
This program focuses specifically on new alternative and sustainable methods of “harvesting” rainwater, very abundant during monsoons for agriculture purposes.