CPH:DOX 2013: Chasing Ice

Chasing Ice

Director: Jeff Orlowski | 2011 | 75 min

Years become seconds when the National Geographic master photographer James Balog with his staggeringly beautiful but also fear-inducing fast motion footage from Greenland, Iceland and Alaska documents how the ice is melting - and how quickly it is happening. Balog brings together a team of glacier scientists and other ice experts, and together they set off on an Arctic voyage of discovery by helicopter, canoe and dogsled to install 27 cameras in fifteen different locations. Cameras, which automatically photograph the ice formations all year round, and which show how the glaciers are disappearing at a terrifying speed. After several failed attempts and several thousand photographs, James succeeded in filming how the climate is changing year by year at a far greater speed than assumed so far. 'Chasing Ice' is the story about one man's mission to focus on climate change by collecting undeniably beautiful pictorial evidence. A work between science, art and passion. And with both ups and downs. But the pictures speak for themselves, and the director Jeff Orlowski supports them by interviewing researchers whose data illustrate that we are not only witnessing Earth's natural atmospheric cycle - if anyone should be in any doubt.

Chasing Ice (2011, 75 min.)
Director: Jeff Orlowski. Producer: Paula DuPré Pesmen.