3454. Film Review: David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

By Natalia Winkelman, The New York Times, October 4, 2020

David Attenborough

The majestic documentary “David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet” opens with its title subject standing in a deserted location. It’s the territory around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, a once buzzing area that was evacuated after human error rendered it uninhabitable. Only later will the directors, Alastair Fothergill, Jonnie Hughes and Keith Scholey, pull their camera back to reveal that the territory, in its vacancy, has grown into a lush wildlife paradise.

Calling the film (streaming on Netflix) his “witness statement” for the environment, David Attenborough goes on to trace his more than 60-year career as a naturalist, mapping how steeply the planet’s biodiversity has degenerated before him. Global air travel was new when he began his work, and footage of him as a young producer encountering exotic flora and fauna lends a moving, even haunting, note to his plea to restore ecological balance.

Astonishing nature photography accompanies his retrospective. To illustrate the emptying of oceans, the directors intercut thriving coral habitats with images of large gutted fish, frozen and stacked for market. Equally upsetting is the loss of rain forests, showcased through the stark cutoff between flourishing vegetation and uniform rows of oil palms planted for profit. Such cinematic juxtapositions are persuasive: A dying planet is an ugly one, while healthy ecosystems please the eye and the earth.

The most devastating sequence finds Attenborough charting the disasters we face in future decades — global crises that he, as a man now in his 90s, will not experience. Yet he finds hope by extrapolating small successes. Sustainable farming in the Netherlands has made the country one of the worldwide leaders in food exports. Fishing restrictions around the Pacific archipelago nation of Palau enabled marine life to rebound. The film’s grand achievement is that it positions its subject as a mediator between humans and the natural world. Life cycles on, and if we make the right choices, ruin can become regrowth.

3453. Film Review: My Octopus Teacher

By Tiffany Doung, EcoWatch, Septermber 24, 2020

In his latest documentary, My Octopus Teacher, free diver and filmmaker Craig Foster tells a unique story about his friendship and bond with an octopus in a kelp forest in Cape Town, South Africa. It's been labeled "the love story that we need right now" by The Cut.

As noted by CNN, the film follows Foster as he battles career exhaustion and depression by going for daily swims in the frigid South African coast.

He becomes fixated upon a common octopus, freediving daily to visit and observe her in her natural habitat. He's amazed by her ability to find clever ways to evade predators and adapt to her environment.

"Before the viewer's eyes, the octopus adapts her crab-hunting strategy for lobster, evades a pyjama shark by climbing onto its back, shape-shifts to resemble seaweed and rocks, and otherwise applies her intelligence and creativity to survive," the NewScientist observed.

Foster's fascination and curiosity with her are matched by hers with him, according to a review by Vulture. The unlikely relationship between them is a mentorship on the fragility of life and man's connection to nature, reported The Cut. Their interaction culminates when the octopus swims up to Foster and lands on his chest, in a display of inter-species connection, the review said.

Throughout the film, Foster tracks the octopus' movements and thereby transports viewers into the octopus' natural world and point of view in a way that has rarely been done before, reported BizNews. It brings a "level of consciousness few have experienced before him" to the life of the cephalopod, and some celebrities have vowed never to eat octopus again after watching it, according to the news report and USA Today.

"If you gain the trust of that animal over a period of months, it will actually ignore you to a certain degree and carry on with its normal life, and allow you to step inside its secret world," Foster told CNN. "The octopus showed me many behaviors that were completely new to science because this animal trusted me."

Foster told CNN that the greatest lesson the octopus taught him is that humans are part of the natural world and not simply visitors.

The film was backed by the Sea Change Project, an NGO Foster co-founded to create awareness about the South African sea forest. The ecosystem stretches for 800 miles along the coasts of Namibia and South Africa, according to VOA News.

"Our group, our whole idea is to try and get this great African sea forest, kind of the home of the octopus teacher, recognized as a global icon, like the Serengeti or the Great barrier reef, because nobody really knows about it and no one realizes just how important this ecosystem is in terms of biodiversity, in terms of how important it is for the planet," Foster said, reported BizNews. "People have sort of forgotten that the biodiversity of nature is our life support system."

Several international publications have listed My Octopus Teacher as a must-see, including The Washington Post, Hollywood reviews, and even scientific articles, according to BizNews. It has already won several prestigious awards, including best feature at the EarthX Film Festival.

2627. Documentary: Murder of Crows

By PBS, July 19, 2016

1947. Film Review: The Salt of the Earth (On Life and Work of Sebastião Salgado)

By Kamran Nayeri, July 26, 2015

A photo from Sahel: The End of the World

The Salt of the Earth (France and Brazil, 2014) is the best artistic and deeply political film I have seen in a long time. It is a biographical documentary of the life and work of Sebastião Salgado the legendary Brazilian social photographer.  Directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, it has won many honors and awards. Salgado defines his work as "militant photography" dedicated to "the best comprehension of man."  More than any other living photographer, Sebastiao Salgado's images of the world's poor stand in tribute to the human condition, from famine-stricken refugees in the Sahel to the indigenous peoples of South America. Mastering the monochrome with an extreme deftness to rival the virtuoso Ansel Adams, Salgado brings black-and-white photography to a new dimension; the tonal variations in his works, the contrasts of light and dark, recall the works of Old Masters such as Rembrandt and Georges de La Tour.

Salgado was born in a well-to-do family on February 8, 1944 in Aimorés, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.  In college he radicalized and met his future wife Lélia Wanick.  Having received his Masters in economics, and Lélia receiving her degree in architecture.  After receiving his Masters in economics Salgado took a well paying job with the International Coffee Organization, often traveling to Africa on missions for the World Bank.  However, Lélia who had become an architect noticed how Salgado took over her work camera while displaying great talent in photography.  She suggested to him that he might want to consider becoming a photographer.  He eventually agreed and tried his hand on wedding, portrait and other money making photographic profession. But he was not happy. 

With Lélia’s encouragement Salgado decided to become a social photographer. Thus began a 40 year journey of a world class social photography as the couple worked as a team.  Together they developed projects that sometimes took ten years to complete. Lélia stayed behind to work and to raise their son Juilano while Salgado spent years in far away places getting to know his subjects and taking photos. Once in a while he would return home to be with his family and complete working on his photographs.  The results appeared in many photographic exhibits and  magnificent books including the following:

• An Uncertain Grace, 1990, with Fred Ritchin about gold miners in Brazil. 
• Terra: Struggle of Landless, 1998, about landless peasants in Brazil.
• Migration, 2000, about mass migrations around the globe and their causes.
• The Children: Refugees and Migrants, 2000, portrays children under the age of 15 from Mozambique, Rwanda, Croatia, Burundi, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Brazil, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Angola, and other countries who will bear the burden of an uncertain future.
• Sahel: The End of the Road, 2004, about the drought-stricken Sahel region of Africa in Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and Sudan, where approximately one million people died from extreme malnutrition and related causes.
• Workers, 2005, about enduring spirit of working men and women.
• Africa, 2007, portrays war, poverty, disease, and hostile climatic conditions.
• Geneis, 2013, placing humans in their ecological context. 

Towards the end of the documentary Salgado confesses that decades of witnessing human brutality and human misery has him give up on the human species.  He exclaims: “Our species will die off.  It deserves to die.” (I am paraphrasing) 

However, when his father died Salgado inherits the childhood farm he grew up on except it has now become so degraded that it is essentially barren.  Salgado misses the spring that ran through part of this land and the tropical forest that made running water a possibility. 

Again, after discussions with Lélia they jointly undertake to revive the old forest. They planted 1.5 million trees creating new forest. The springs came back flowing. Salgado found new hope in reviving humanity through reviving nature. The husband and wife turned the farm and revived forest into public land trust for educational purpose as an example of what can be done to repair damages done by humans to the planet. 

If there is a weakness in the documentary it is not interviewing Lélia enough. It seemed to me that she is a rather important figure in the Salgado’s legend.  Still, this is a documentary about the human condition, of our worse, and our best as exemplified in the loving and creative relationship of Sebastião and Lélia and their team effort combined with rare talent of Salgado to draw international attention not only to the crisis that is the dominant feature of the current human condition but also our ability to raise up as the couple did after decades of witnessing helpless misery in reviving the earth that gives life to all and to ourselves.  In the one scene when Lélia speaks she proudly says they have now planted 1.5 million trees. And she adds: there is still plenty of land beyond the hills to planet more trees. 

The Salt of the Earth touches our heart and mind and ends up inspiring us to rejuvenate our environment so brutally destroyed as a way to regain our humanity.