Persistencia
2016 · 46m · Documentary
In Antarctica, an artist prepares his installation simultaneously with a group of scientists conducting research. An essay on the persistence and loneliness of the creative act; like the flight of a butterfly in chaos theory or a silent prayer. A sensory experience. A visual poem made of ice, snow and wind.
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2014 · ★ 10
The Chukchi reindeer breeders are peculiar people. They are nomads. Reindeers are their welfare, the purport of life. The mother-reindeer is the main divine being; it protects the Chukchi from misfortune and troubles. Nature is not friendly towards people here. Only Chukchi can survive in Tundra. A rush period for the Chukchi reindeer breeders comes in winter, when the temperature rises up to 50 degrees Celsius at night and in the sunlight of the day it doesn't exceed 40 degrees Celsius in tundra: they should separate young deers from the rest of the herd, the weak from the strong. And this, considering that the herds of the Chukchi reindeer breeders number some thousand heads...
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Ice Dogs: The Only Companions Worth Having
2016
The Arctic is accessible to man only because of ice dogs. As hunters, haulers, and guardians, they have been our vital link to nature for thousands of years. Dogs led the Sarqaq people out of Siberia and, a millennium later, led explorers to the North Pole. As the light returns to Greenland, we arrive in Scoresbysund with a troop of the only companions worth having in this harsh environment.
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Herd: Inuit Voices on Caribou
2022
Through Inuit voices, HERD: Inuit Voices on Caribou tells the story of the social, emotional, and cultural disruptions from ecological change by putting an essential human face to the caribou declines - including a 99% decline of the once-massive George River Caribou Herd. The film was developed over four years of collaboration between filmmakers and 11 Inuit communities across Labrador. It cinematically explores an array of lived experiences, from youth to Elders and hunters to cooks, to ensure that the stories of those living on the frontlines of this ecological crisis are HERD. It is a portrait of the deep connections that exist between humans and non-humans, a glimpse of heartbreaking loss felt by entire communities, and a lasting testament of cultural resilience in the context of ecological uncertainty.
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Being Caribou
2005 · ★ 8
Wildlife biologist Karsten Heuer and his wife, environmentalist Leanne Allison follow a herd of 120,000 caribou on foot across 1500 km of Arctic tundra, hoping to raise awareness of the threats to the caribou's survival. Along this journey, they brave torrid conditions, dangerous wildlife and treacherous terrain all in the hopes of learning the truth about this epic migration.
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To the Arctic
2024 · ★ 7
The documentary film “To the Arctic,” filmed by director and ethnographer Leonid Kruglov, is dedicated to the discoveries and research of the largest icy desert in the world. For the first time, the film captures all the most remote and inaccessible Arctic archipelagos of the Russian high-latitude Arctic, which are scattered over an area of more than 10,000 km. Among them are Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, Ushakov Island and the New Siberian Islands archipelago, Wrangel Island and the De Long archipelago, as well as many other hidden corners of the North.
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The Flood
2021
The decision to move to Holland doesn't sound like a wise idea. Why move to a country that could be flooded at any moment? For the last 25 years, the political climate has shifted. The public debate on migration has become harsher, more heated, and polarized. What would have been considered right-wing xenophobia back then, is now considered mainstream. Populists simplify complex realities into good and evil, victims and perpetrators: ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Their rhetoric often consists of dehumanizing words and metaphors. One of these is ‘water’. In reality, water is not an immediate threat to the average Dutch person; but it is a huge threat to the thousands trying to reach the Netherlands. People trying to survive the Mediterranean Sea in rubber boats. Trying to survive winter on the Aegean coast in primitive tents. To them, water really is deadly.
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Worlds of Ice
2022
From the territories of the Arctic to the farthest reaches of the universe, Worlds of Ice shows us the astonishing omnipresence of ice.
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Groenland, annexe-moi si tu peux
2025
Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, is currently at the center of international covetousness and tensions. In his rivalry with China for technological supremacy, Donald Trump has made the acquisition of this Arctic territory a priority in order to secure American control over rare earth elements, of which Greenland is believed to hold one of the world's largest reserves.
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Philippe-Alain Michaud, le réel traversé par la fiction
2016
To be in Venice and see the architecture of New York, to perceive in a painting by Tintoretto the birth of animated images, to look at the burlesque Cretinetti as the ancestor of montage - so many shifts, displacements, and striking telescopings that Philippe-Alain Michaud proposes in this film dedicated to him. To follow this art historian, curator of the cinema collections at the Centre Pompidou, is to go from the oriental carpet to the film, or from the first fireworks to the cinema. And everywhere the animation of the images - projections of Antony McCall, or of Paul Sharits, Column without end of Brancusi, Pasolini's Accatone - everything moves! Under the tutelage of Aby Warburg, the great art historian of the early twentieth century, precursor of iconology and image comparison, to whom Philippe-Alain Michaud was the first in France to devote an important essay, eleven images are placed on the table to describe the singular journey of this art historian.
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2020 · ★ 7
The wildlife of the tundra on Alaska's north coast is particularly threatened by climate change.
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Arctic
2020 · ★ 8
This film shows the splendor, enormous scope and indescribable beauty of this untouched land far to the north of Alaska, one of the last havens for caribou herds and polar bears. Shot over a period of four years, this film offers a unique insight in the lives of the most charismatic arctic animals.
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