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| In Feast, when the cows are led to the abattoir, along a narrow walled-in calvary designed by Temple Grandin, we follow them right up to the gate. |
Virtual Reality Docu-Series This Is Climate Change will be presented by directors Danfung Dennis and Eric Strauss during the Tribeca Film Festival starting on April 21 at the Cinema360 VR Theater inside the festival Hub at Spring Studios. Three of the four parts, Fire, Famine and Feast can be viewed. Melting Ice first shown in 2017 at Sundance will not be available for viewing.
This Is Climate Change reminds us that we as humans can still do something about what is happening all over the world if we decide to open our eyes and desire a new reality.
Fire
A look at the violent effects of climate change very close to home. The wildfires in California of last October are shown from the perspective of the firefighters. We are in the helicopters with them and walk over the graveyard of ashes and metal scraps, whole neighbourhoods have become. You can almost smell the smoldering earth. A man walks through the ruins of his home burnt to the ground. Not far, another house is still standing, still more or less intact. The sense we get is of the luck of the draw, the direction of the wind deciding fates.
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| World Premiere of Virtual Reality Docu-Series This Is Climate Change |
Famine
We are taken to the dried-out plains of Somalia. Camels wander up close; they are searching for water. In the make-shift camps, displaced families see little future for themselves and in a hospital children are dying of malnutrition. The faraway comes shockingly near and cannot be ignored when you feel you are sitting right there, next to a mother who explains to you what it means when farming has become impossible on the land that used to be lush and productive.
Feast
The perfect example that action can be taken by everyone and that individual choices add up and can constitute a gigantic problem. We start out in the rain forests of Brazil that are being cut down with alarming speed to make room for financially more profitable cattle ranches. The physical closeness to the impressive animals has an emotional effect that should not be underestimated. When the cows are led to the abattoir, along a narrow walled-in calvary designed by Temple Grandin, we follow them right up to the gate. Deforestation and that burger so casually consumed go hand in glove.
Melting Ice
Al Gore is our guide in a melting Greenland, there to make sure that the beauty of images won't let us forget that the future of the planet is at stake here. We are positioned among the glaciers where enormous chunks of ice tumble into the sea. Turn your head to the left and there is Gore looking at a raging river. Turn to the right and you duck in order to not get wet from the spray off the boat. Turn up and the sky is bluer than blue.
Each Cinema360 program will screen twice daily on the 5th floor of the Tribeca Film Festival Hub at Spring Studios, 50 Varick Street.
The 17th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival presented by AT&T runs from April 18 through April 29.
