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Chasing Ice – a documentary James Balog Review by JZ Murdock – Part I [The original for this article was for PerihelionSF.com] THE MULTIPLE AWARD WINNING documentary, “Chasing Ice” explores a topic so massive that many people cannot realistically grasp its significance. It is, after all, much easier to stick one’s head in the sand and deny its existence. Noted photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) team have attempted to get those people to pull their heads out and to explain to the rest of us just what is happening to our world, using facts and hauntingly beautiful imagery. Difficult subjects are always easier to understand when they involve pretty pictures. “Chasing Ice” artfully uses the imagery of our planet’s disappearing glaciers like a velvet sledgehammer to drive that reality home. Balog’s filmic poem to the devastation that we are undeniably heading into is directed and produced by Jeff Orlowski, and beautifully edited by Davis Coombe. The film first reminds us of the storms that have flooded Texas and the Gulf waters, events all the more poignant after the devastations of Katrina and “superstorm” Sandy. Articles in recent years in magazines like “Scientific American” have regularly pointed out that although we may not see increases in the numbers of storms, we will surely see a rise in their size and power. These destructive weather patterns are not going away and we will be paying attention to them whether we want to believe in them or not. Melting glaciers are a major element in those changes. Chasing Ice Crew at Sundance 2012 Still, this film is not so much about climate change as it is about one man’s life and career exploring what is happening to our ice fields and sharing that information with the world. It’s about the effect this journey has had on James Balog, on his family, on those in his crew and their efforts to chase down these disappearing glaciers over a period of years, in mind numbing temperatures and through severe weather. Yet amidst all those frozen ice fields we feel a heartfelt warmth and at times, some refreshingly honest humor. All the while carrying us to a fearful, underlying message. Ice is beautiful. Balog discovered this back in 2005, and through the eyes of such an artist, ice is magnificent. While in Iceland on a National Geographic assignment about climate change, he became fascinated by the ice and intimately aware of the speed at which those glaciers were leaving us. We have all heard about the ice melting but to see it in a film such as this with your own eyes is really another thing altogether. It is so much more poignant. With painstaking care and a driving passion, we see the jaw-clenching risks the team took to capture these videos and the devastation they felt when technology failed them and time was lost. At one point in the film the EIS team travels to where thousands of Icelandic glacial ice core samples are stored. Extrapolating data from the cores, we are shown a graph charting the course of CO2, a major greenhouse gas, over hundreds of thousands of years. Glaciologists use these layered core samples to track, year by year, air quality and give us a carbon history of the planet. Glaciers trap carbon in the form of soot from such things as forest fires, and more recently from manmade wastes such as car exhausts, factories, jet fuel exhaust, and on and on. When the film presented the chart I actually heard gasps from the audience. Maintaining steady cyclical levels, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rises dramatically starting from the industrial revolution up to present. Records from the Antarctic aren’t any better. Disturbing projections for the future show that at these rates things can only get worse if we don’t do something about them. From this point on the film only got more interesting. If I have to criticize the film on any one point that would have to be for lack of even mentioning the southern Antarctic ice fields. In a joint study published in November 2012 by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), a component of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they have shown how, though the ice is melting in the Arctic, it seems to be relocating around some parts of the Antarctic. They have also shown that the Antarctic is actually growing slightly. These changes appear to be due to wind patterns and yes, due to climate change. What “Chasing Ice,” James Balog, and his EIS team have done is to bring awareness of this situation painfully and beautifully into focus. They lay it out in full context and in terms that we can all appreciate, capturing some amazing, first time ever events in HD video clarity. The last ten minutes of this film are not to be missed. At the conclusion of the nearly packed Seattle premiere that I attended, after the titles ended, after the images faded to black and the appropriately beautiful, original song, “Before My Time,” written by J. Ralph, sung by Scarlett Johansson, with the brilliant Joshua Bell accompanying on violin, the audience paused a moment in humbled silence. Then the theater erupted in applause. You could feel the emotional wave passing through the theater and not for the first time that evening. I have to admit that I was a little stunned by the film. I think everyone was. That, I believe, is the firmest testament I can offer to the quality and impact of this film. It deserves, at last count, its 23 awards. After 75 minutes of being taken to what seemed like a tragic, magical world it was, in the end, all real. We will have to bring the magic into play now, ourselves. If I really need to say any more than I already have, it would have to be simply this: see this film. (Directed by Jeff Orlowski. Produced by Submarine Deluxe. Rated PG-13.) —J.Z. Murdock Review by JZ Murdock – Part II The world as we know it is coming to an end. The ice caps are melting, the ocean levels are rising. And humans one might conjecture are purposefully increasing the speed with which this is all happening. At very least it IS all happening. There really is no question about that and these are not contentions up for debate. These-- are facts. That is what the documentary "Chasing Ice" is all about. That and sharing with us an unbelievably beautiful dance of time and nature in the form of video and photographs of a type which have never been seen before. James Balog, creator and Director of the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), is a scientifically oriented documentarian. He is a long time, world renowned photographer famous for juxtapositions in his photographs using elements of nature and displaying them in ways that make them impossible to ignore. His photographs have graced the covers of The New Yorker, National Geographic, Life, American Photo, Vanity Fair, Sierra, Audubon, and Outside, and others. To give an example of what they found on the EIS over these past years, James Balog has said that regarding Glacier National Park in Montana, which used to have 150 glaciers, it now has twenty-six remaining. By the time our kids are in their fifties, it will need a new name. Perhaps, "Glacier Nostalgia Park" or as Balog has suggested himself, "Glacierless National Park". “Founded in 2007 by James Balog, the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) is an innovative, long-term photography project that merges art and science to give a “visual voice” to the planet’s changing ecosystems. EIS imagery preserves a visual legacy, providing a unique baseline—useful in years, decades and even centuries to come—for revealing how climate change and other human activity impacts the planet.” From the Extreme Ice Survey web site - http://extremeicesurvey.org/ On Friday, November 16, 2012 at 7:30PM, I attended the premiere presentation of “Chasing Ice” at the perfect venue; the lovely, old fashioned Egyptian Theater in Seattle, WA. Introducing and essential to bringing the film to Seattle, was Bill Donnelly, a current Treasurer on the Board of Directors for Conservation Northwest; current Board President of Basel Action Network; and previous Treasurer on the Board of Directors of the Washington Environmental Council (2000-2010). Introduction by Bill Donnelly of “Chasing Ice”, the documentary by James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey (EIS). “I'm Bill Donnelly and I've been working with my partner and cohort, ? on this effort, taking months getting to a moment like this. Thank you all for turning out. It's really remarkable that we've been sitting on having a couple of good events. We turned out about 1600 people for Bill McKibben a little over a week ago, for 350.org and December 13th is another opportunity that we have a hearing for Power Past Coal might be at the Convention Center. “We're going to have seventy-five minutes, seventy-six minutes of what I think is a dazzling film and a very good message of some beautiful cinematography, it's an adventure story, it's got pathos in it, and of course it tells us something about what is happening to our planet. At the end of the film, I hope you will stay with us for a few minutes because Svavar Jonatansson, who is a member of the crew, you will see him minimally, will be here to talk with you about the film, about the development of the film, and answer questions, hopefully, to your satisfaction.

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