While most of the population remains cooped up at home, nature is bouncing back; and so we’ve decided to commemorate Mother Nature during this pandemic for Earth Day, which takes place every year on April 22nd. Perhaps now more than ever, we should all be a little more sensitive when recognising the role that nature plays in our daily lives. We hereby present a series of thought-provoking documentary films that capture nature's beauty and fragility, all whilst daring to raise questions about how nature will change in the future.
There are few places on Earth where you can fully recognise your role in nature’s system, and the mountains are one of those places, especially when you’re there alone. One such hermit is Lithuanian scientist Aušra in the film, The Woman and the Glacier, shot by renowned Lithuanian director Audrius Stonys. At a dizzying height and within the immediate vicinity of a glacier in the Kazakh mountains, Aušra becomes a silent observer of the small changes to the glacier and its damning consequences to planet Earth. In Pieter Van Eecke’s documentary, Samuel in the Clouds, we meet Samuel, a former ski lift operator who lives in a mountain hut high above the clouds. Years ago, a glacier once surrounded his home on Mount Chacaltaya, making it a popular hot spot for skiers. Today, what was once the world’s highest ski resort in the Bolivian Andes is now no more, and it hasn't been open for years. Yet Samuel continues to look out his window in the hopes that someday soon the snow will come back and reform the glacier that surrounded his mountain home. In the film, Landscapes of a Capelada, the camera becomes a window overlooking the mystical mountain range in northern Spain. In a series of slow shots, viewers will have to decide for themselves how anyone could possibly interfere with such a gorgeous, natural landscape that was formed in this very spot over 200 million years ago.
DAFilms.com is powered by Doc Alliance, a creative partnership of 7 key European documentary film festivals. Our aim is to advance the documentary genre, support its diversity and promote quality creative documentary films.
