PRESENTS A FILM BY JEFF ORLOWSKI From the Producer of the Academy Award Winning “The Cove” Winner Excellence in Cinematography – Sundance Film Festival 2012 Audience Award Festival Favorites – SXSW 2012 Audience Award – River Run Film Festival 2012 People’s Choice Award – Hot Docs Film Festival 2012 Audience Award – BerKshire Film Festival 2012 Audience Award – Palo Alto Film Festival 2012 Audience Award – BerwicK Film Festival 2012 Audience Award – Port Townsend Film Festival 2012 Norman Vaughan Indomitable Spirit Award – Mountainfilm Telluride 2012 Best Feature Film – Big SKy Film Festival 2012 Nicholas School Environmental Award – Full Frame Film Festival 2012 Best Adventure Film – Boulder International Film Festival 2012 Special Jury Award – Torino Film Festival 2012 Honorable Mention by Jury – CinemAmbiente Film Festival 2012 Environmental Media Award 2012 Other Film Festivals Sundance London 2012 Ashland Film Festival 2012 Sarasota Film Festival 2012 Sheffield Film Festival 2012 Silverdocs Film Festival 2012 NantucKet Film Festival 2012 Original Song “BEFORE MY TIME” Music and Lyrics by J. Ral;ph Performed by Scarlett Johansson & Joshua Bell 1 CONTACT INFORMATION FILM DISTRIBUTION PUBLICITY SUBMARINE DELUXE LOS ANGELES 525 Broadway, Suite 601 Fredell Pogodin New YorK, NY 10012 Patrick Lowry (212) 625-1410 office Fredell Pogodin & Associates 7223 Beverly Boulevard Dan Braun Los Angeles, CA 90036 (212) 625-1410 (323) 931-7300 [email protected] [email protected] David Koh NEW YORK (646) 929-3468 Cynthia Swartz [email protected] Elena Zilberman, Katelyn Bogacki Strategy PR 600 Third Avenue, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10016 (646) 873-6660 [email protected] RELEASE DATE: November 9-NY, November 16-BerKeley, Cambridge, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, DC; November 23-Los Angeles, Denver; National Rollout to Follow GENRE: Documentary Feature Film; 75 mins/English NOTES/IMAGES: ftp address: submarine.com username: subdeluxe password: Subdeluxe2012 SYNOPSIS Acclaimed environmental photographer James Balog was once a sKeptic about climate change and a cynic about the nature of academic research. But through his Extreme Ice Survey, he discovers undeniable evidence of our changing planet. In Chasing Ice, Balog deploys revolutionary time-lapse cameras to capture a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Traveling with a team of young adventurers across the brutal Arctic, Balog risks his career and his wellbeing in pursuit of the biggest story facing humanity. As the debate polarizes America, and the intensity of natural disasters ramps up globally, Chasing Ice depicts a heroic photojournalist on a mission to deliver fragile hope to our carbon- powered planet. 2 “You’ve never seen images like this before…it deserves to be seen and felt on the big screen.” – Robert Redford Q&A WITH DIRECTOR JEFF ORLOWSKI Talk about how “Chasing Ice” came to you as a film. How did you get involved? I was connected to James Balog through a good mutual friend, and we met on occasion in Boulder, Colorado every time I visited. I was a photographer, and a huge fan of James’s worK, and really wanted to worK with him. In 2007, he started his project called the Extreme Ice Survey and I offered to help for free. I went with him and a team to Iceland when he started installing his first time lapse cameras, and I filmed the entire trip. It was mostly just to document what he was doing, and to have a record of the project. Then I went with him to Greenland, and then AlasKa, and then Kept traveling with him, filming everywhere we went. Over time, we had collected a great archive of the project, and I Knew we could maKe a great film out of it. There have been so many efforts to document climate change, but this one was unique As James’s time-lapses started to come bacK from the field, we knew the project was worKing. So I put all my efforts into maKing a feature doc, built a world-class team to support me, and spent the next few years dedicated to ice. Can you talk about your relationship with James Balog and what it is about his work that you were drawn to? James is an incredible mentor and friend. He’s a perfectionist and will stop at nothing to create an image. But it’s not just about maKing a photograph. For him, it’s really about what the image is saying. What it means. And then how that can be communicated to the viewer. He has had a profound influence on my life, and unquestionably he’s been my greatest artistic influence. I thinK he is one of the greatest artistic minds of our generation. How many locations did you shoot at and how did you select them? The list is too long! Greenland, Iceland, AlasKa, Glacier National ParK in Montana, the Alps, Bolivia, Canada... Wherever James went, we followed. James selected the locations to install his time-lapse cameras based on wanting to capture a very broad representation of glaciers all around the world. He wanted his Extreme Ice Survey to show people how glaciers are 3 responding everywhere--not just in one small region; so we followed him everywhere. Beyond the work in the field, we filmed scientists and experts all around the country who could help explain why James’s worK is so critical. What were your biggest challenges during filming? The biggest challenge was the harsh environments. We had weather as low as negative 30 degrees. One winter night in Greenland, I thought I was going to freeze to death in our cabin. Our heater was leaKing gas so we decided to go to sleep without it. I woKe up in the middle of the night from my own teeth chattering. I rubbed my body to stay warm, and suffered until sunrise. But as cold as it was, and as difficult as it may seem, that was all the fun stuff. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. I’d much rather be out shooting than editing! This is your first feature length film after directing some shorts. Can you speak to how the process on Chasing Ice differed from your previous films? At the beginning of this project, I had no idea how big it would eventually become. We just started shooting, and we captured what was going on. We did what needed to be done, and over time, the project got bigger and bigger. All of my previous projects were tiny compared to Chasing Ice. Even a 40-minute narrative film I made seems liKe caKe in retrospect. There were so many times when I thought we were close to being done and then after doing a test screening, we realized that we had major structural problems, or we realized that we needed to do more interviews, or something else. It grew to a scope and a scale that was beyond the original goal, and it was so much more worK than we originally expected. But it was all worth it, and our entire team is really proud of what we have created. Chasing Ice” features some very moving images of how climate change is impacting our natural world. What do you hope audiences take away from the film? As James says, he wants people to realize that these images are visual evidence of climate change. His time-lapses capture that process in action. It’s really hard for the average person to see the impact that humans have on the planet, especially when we live in a huge, beautiful country like America. You can drive across the States and spend days just looking out at huge 4 open fields, and think, “how is my little car supposed to be having some sort of impact on all of that?” Yet what James has documented is that visual record. It’s something that people can see and feel that represents what the science has concluded. Glaciers may seem really far away, in a distant world that nobody ever goes to, yet we humans are changing them. I hope that Chasing Ice can take James’s work and make it real for people; to take the beautiful world of ice and to maKe it tangible and bring it close to home. If it helps change how people think about their relationship to nature, and how human beings exist on this planet, I’ll consider it a success. FILMMAKER BIOS JEFF ORLOWSKI Director/Producer In 2007, Jeff OrlowsKi got his first taste of the Arctic when as a Stanford student he seized an opportunity to worK as a videographer with National Geographic photographer James Balog on the initial expedition of The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS). That winter, the EIS team scouted and filmed glaciers that now appear in the documentary feature film Chasing Ice. OrlowsKi, a New YorK native, has been filming the EIS project around the world, worKing in some of the most extreme conditions imaginable on locations in Iceland, Greenland, Bolivia, the Alps, AlasKa, and Glacier National ParK, Montana. Jeff’s previous work has taKen him to the Tour de France for a behind-the-scenes documentary, and he has photographed and filmed a number of people including Robin Williams, Jane Goodall, and Nelson Mandela. OrlowsKi’s Geocaching: From the Web to the Woods won Best Short Doc at the SidewalK Moving Picture Festival 2006 in Birmingham, Alabama. In 2008, he won the Best Editing award for his last film The Strange Case at the Action on Film Festival, Pasadena, California. OrlowsKi’s imagery has exhibited at The Denver Museum of Nature and Science; The Aspen Institute; The Scripps Institute; The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, 2009; and before the U.S Congress on Capitol Hill.