Chasing Ice: A Review

 

It's been a long time since I have written up a review of any of the documentaries I have watched. I guess I just haven't been super impressed. But as soon as I saw Chasing Ice, I knew I had to spread the word. In short: it is amazing.
The documentary is about James Balog, an amazing nature photographer that I just can't get enough of. His latest work has been doing time-lapse photography to capture the glacier melt that has been happening at northern latitudes, and this film is his story of making that project come to life.
James installed cameras throughout Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and Montana and has set the cameras to take multiple photos each day. He collected photos over several years, and linked the pictures together to give time lapse images of how the glaciers have changed. The amount of movement, and melt, blew my mind (and I teach about global warming!).
James is trying to show the reality of global warming in a way that everyone can understand. As James points out in the film, numerical data and climate models don't mean much to the average person, and a line graph certainly doesn't instill fear into most people. But, watching huge glaciers melt before our very eyes.... well, that, to me, brings a whole new urgency to the issue of climate change.
I decided to show this film to my class this term. It speaks to the importance of global warming, but through the beauty of photography, and I found myself tearing up at several points throughout the film, both at the beauty of the images James was capturing, and the terrifying fate of of our glaciers and our future.
This is one to watch. If you have Netflix, you can watch it instantly.