365 Inspirations—13: The Movie "Chasing Ice"

“We as a culture, we are forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very deep connection and contact with nature. You can’t divorce civilization from nature, we totally depend on it.”—James Balog

















Yesterday I went to the discount ($3.00 movie tickets) Landmark Theater called Crest near my house in Seattle. We saw the 5:15pm showing of Chasing Ice about a photographer named James Balog who was given an assignment by National Geographic to photograph the disappearing glaciers around the world. He set up cameras in Alaska, Greenland, Montana and other places and left them there for several months to record, through time lapse photography, how rapidly these glaciers are disappearing.

The two most inspiring things about the movie were:

1) James Balog's dedication to the Extreme Ice Survey project. Despite the fact that he had had knee surgery three times, he did not let that stop him from ice picking his way to across some of the most treacherous terrains in order to see this project through. What started out as simply an assignment, very soon became a passion to educate the world that climate change is very real.

2) The photography and footage are breathtaking, miraculous and heart-breaking all at once. I could never really wrap my head around climate change until I saw these photographs and footage.

The movie inspired me to "be the change" I wish to see in the world and to pay more attention to my natural environment and treat it well.

Have you seen any interesting or inspiring movies lately? Did they inspire you to do something different?