Atmospheric Gases over Time
Sundance is shining a spotlight on climate change this year
From Notice by Katie Herzog, Grist News, January 11, 2017
The film festival, running January 19 – 29 in Park City, Utah, will showcase several films about the environment, including An Inconvenient Sequel, the follow-up to the award-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Like the original, the sequel highlights Al Gore’s climate activism, but with more of a focus on solutions.
The festival will also premiere 13 other documentaries, short films, and special projects concerning the planet. The documentary Water & Power: A California Heist is an exposé on Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the billionaire couple sucking California’s water supply dry. The short film The Diver is about a man who swims through Mexico City’s sewer system dislodging clogs.
There will also be a virtual-reality experience “that turns participants into a tree that is violently chopped down,” the New York Times reports.
Although Robert Redford, founder of Sundance, said the festival stays “free of politics,” it will certainly have a political tinge this year, as it will take place right as a climate denier ascends to the White House.
The festival’s program directors said they decided last summer to focus on environmental films. The goal: “To change the world,” programmer Trevor Groth told the Times with a grin.
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“An Inconvenient Sequel,” Follow-up to “An Inconvenient Truth” to World Premiere at 2017 Sundance Film Festival as Day One Screening
From the Sundance Institute, December 9, 2016
Park City, UT — An Inconvenient Sequel, the followup to watershed environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth, will make its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival as a Day One screening, part of The New Climate, a program dedicated to conversations and films about environmental change and conservation.
A decade after An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change into the heart of popular culture comes An Inconvenient Sequel, a riveting look at both the escalation of the crisis and how close we are to a real solution. Directed by Sundance Film Festival alumni Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk.
The Honorable Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States, will also join the Festival’s Power of Story panel, a collaboration between Sundance Institute and The Redford Center, with former President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, producer Heather Rae (Frozen River, RISE), social entrepreneur and philanthropist Jeff Skoll and environmentalist and scientist Dr. David Suzuki. A conversation between these prominent figures, who bring decades of direct experience with climate change and its effects, will be moderated by Democracy Now! journalist and broadcaster Amy Goodman on January 22, 2017, and livestreamed from Park City’s Egyptian Theatre at sundance.org.
The New Climate includes 14 documentaries, short films and virtual reality experiences across the Festival’s categories, and marks the first time that Festival programmers have focused efforts to highlight a specific cause.
Robert Redford, President and Founder of Sundance Institute, said, “I believe that storytelling is the greatest platform for getting people to care and take action on some of the most pressing issues of our time. Amid escalating threats to our environment, independent perspectives are adding the depth and dimension needed for us to find common ground and real solutions.”
John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, said, “This film and the 13 other films and projects that are part of The New Climate slate this year add a new chapter to our legacy of showcasing stories on the environment and climate change. When my team and I first watched this film, we were taken by its complete, sensitive and cinematic presentation of the issues. It was emotional to see the scope of our world’s problems — and heartening to see the potential for progress.”
2017’s other projects for The New Climate appear below. Environmental films and projects showcased at the Festival in recent years include The Cove, Gasland, Chasing Ice, Racing Extinction and Collisions. The New Climate is a partnership of Sundance Institute and The Redford Center.
Chasing Coral / U.S.A. (Director: Jeff Orlowski) — Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)
Chasing Coral: The VR Experience / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Jeff Orlowski) — Zackary Rago, a passionate scuba diver and researcher, documented the unprecedented 2016 coral bleaching event at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef with this exclusive underwater VR experience. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)
The Diver / Mexico (Director: Esteban Arrangoiz) — Julio César Cu Cámara is the chief diver in the Mexico City sewer system. His job is to repair pumps and dislodge garbage that flows into the gutters to maintain the circulation of sewage waters. (Short Films)
Hot Winter: A film by Dick Pierre / U.S.A. (Director: Jack Henry Robbins, Screenwriters: Jack Henry Robbins, Nunzio Randazzo) — One of the first films in American cinema to address climate change, Hot Winter: A film by Dick Pierre, was also a hardcore porno. All sex scenes have been removed as to not distract from the conscious message. (Short Films)
Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry / U.S.A. (Directors: Laura Dunn, Jef Sewell) — This cinematic portrait of the changing landscapes and shifting values of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture is seen through the mind’s eye of farmer and writer Wendell Berry. (Spotlight)
Melting Ice / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Danfung Dennis) — We take viewers on a transcendent exploration into the devastating consequences of climate change on Greenland’s ice sheet. Stand under collapsing glaciers, next to raging rivers of ice melt and witness rising sea levels—all visceral warnings of our planet’s future. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)
Plastic China / China (Director: Jiu-liang Wang) — Yi-Jie, an 11-year-old girl, works alongside her parents in a recycling facility while dreaming of attending school. Kun, the facility’s ambitious foreman, dreams of a better life. Through the eyes and hands of those who handle its refuse, comes an examination of global consumption and culture. International Premiere. (World Documentary)
Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman / U.S.A. (Directors: Susan Froemke, John Hoffman, Beth Aala) — From the Montana Rockies to the wheat fields of Kansas and the Gulf of Mexico, families who work the land and sea are crossing political divides to find unexpected ways to protect the natural resources vital to their livelihoods. These are the new heroes of conservation, deep in America’s heartland. World Premiere. (Documentary Premieres)
RISE / Canada (Director and screenwriter: Michelle Latimer) — This vibrant and immersive documentary series explores the front lines of indigenous resistance. Episodes Apache Stronghold, Sacred Water and Red Power examine factors that threaten indigenous liberation in the 21st century. A series of contrasts, this series is both a condemnation of colonialism and a celebration of indigenous peoples. Continuing Sundance Institute’s ongoing commitment to presenting bold stories from within the Native American and Indigenous communities, we are proud to debut three episodes: Apache Stronghold, Sacred Water and Red Power, followed by an extended Q&A. World Premiere. (Special Events)
Tree / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Milica Zec, Winslow Porter, Key Collaborators: Aleksandar Protic, Jacob Kudsk Steensen) — This virtual experience transforms you into a rainforest tree. With your arms as the branches and body as the trunk, you experience the tree’s growth from a seedling to its fullest form and witness its fate firsthand. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)
Trophy / U.S.A. (Director: Shaul Schwarz, Co-Director: Christina Clusiau) — This in-depth look into the powerhouse industries of big-game hunting, breeding and wildlife conservation in the U.S. and Africa unravels the complex consequences of treating animals as commodities. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)
Visions of an Island / U.S.A. (Director: Sky Hopinka) — Indigenous and foreign presences coexist on an Alaskan island in the center of the Bering Sea. (Short Films)
Water & Power: A California Heist / U.S.A. (Director: Marina Zenovich) — In California’s convoluted water system, notorious water barons find ways to structure a state-engineered system to their own advantage. This examination into their centers of power shows small farmers and everyday citizens facing drought and a new, debilitating groundwater crisis. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)
The New Climate is Sundance Institute’s year-round environmental initiative, supported by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, Discovery Channel, Vulcan Productions, Code Blue Foundation, FOND Group, EarthX Film, and the Joy Family Foundation.
Sundance Institute
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, and new media to create and thrive. The Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences to artists in igniting new ideas, discovering original voices, and building a community dedicated to independent storytelling.
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