Chasing Ice

Chasing Ice is as strong a documentary as I have ever seen concerning the issues of global warming, and that includes Al Gore's terrific Oscar winning Inconvenient Truth. It centers on a man named James Balog, a National Geographic photographer, who with a team sets an array of advanced cameras focusing on various glaciers in Greenland, Iceland and Alaska in order to see the change in the ice coverage over periods of months and years. At first the complex and fragile nature of such a program leads to great technical difficulties, but eventually they do get the program on track, and the results are no less than stunning.

The film is not overtly political. It begins with a montage of "skeptics" of human caused climate change. Balog, who claims to have himself once been a skeptic, ends up getting deeply involved in the project to the detriment of time with his family and the numerous surgeries he gets on his knees. Throughout the film the science of global warming and it's general effects on the planet is tiptoed into, but primarily it lets the visuals do the talking. This film is beautiful and disturbing literally at the same time with treks across ice sheets viewing the melting in real time, images of glaciers breaking off into the sea, and the main focus the time-lapse footage.

I'm not going to say exactly how these years-long images turned out, but just mention they are insightful, gorgeous, and certainly do not contradict the science which in at least general terms has been settled for many years. The highlight of the movie for me is not however seeing the glaciers shrink over a long period of time, but an instant of change after a couple of Balog's colleagues have sat on a vulnerable piece of ice for a few days; it's a spectacular break off of ice like you've never seen before—I was horrifically captivated.

Chasing Ice is fascinating on a personal and scientific level, and in my opinion has to be considered one of the most important documentaries of this decade. This film rightly doesn't try to find solutions to the problem as it's beyond its scope, but it clearly states that there is a problem; one we can't ignore.

James Balog and Jeff Orlowski team up in what turned out to be a fantastic effort in documenting vast amounts of photographic evidence of the effects of recent global temperature increases on glaciers in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland.

The footage is magnificent and the film is scored very well. James Balog's personal challenges in undertaking the project are also documented, and present an interesting angle to this style of documentary.

By presenting the footage in as non-partisan manner as possible, Chasing Ice avoids tarnishing its message with politics.

The photography is absolutely amazing in this film! If you have any interest at all in nature photography, it is a must see. For those who criticize, I would remind you that it IS a documentary. It's SUPPOSED to be about the process and the people involved. It is one man's story of his passion for photography, the environment, and making an impact. It's not meant to be a dry science class,full of statistics and probabilities. It is simply the undeniable photographic documentation of how significantly the planet is changing from the effects of global warming. It's meant to SHOW people the beauty of our world and to illustrate that is dying right under our noses. Perhaps photographs aren't as scientifically "valid" as modeling and statistical inferences, but they ARE irrefutable and far more convincing to most of the general population.

Chasing Ice This documentary meets art feature and Sundance select for Excellence in Cinematography is visually breathtaking! This had been on my watch-list for months & thankfully the Environmental Protection Agency (Great organisation which deserves more recognition for their excellent reports, which were the backbone for my thesis on environmental issues last year!) Organised a special one-off free screening in the Irish Film Institute last night and the first of a partnership series hopefully. It was great to see a full-house with an applause at the end.

The documentary follows National Geographic photographer and Extreme Ice Survey founder James Balog and his passionate team across Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and the Arctic as they installs custom-made time-lapse cameras to document never before seen glaciation at an extreme. The resulting photography is both frightening and breathtakingly beautiful.

The issues that many people seem to have with this film are that it doesn't engage in a political argument and that it doesn't provide a solution to the problem. Balog stated that this isn't a political problem, it's a universal problem. The point is he's delivering a message with his photography and he's letting the photographs do the talking, not tarnishing the message with politics. & the aim of this film is to spread awareness not to provide a solution.

This is an eye-opener and a visual reference as to how much climate change is immediately effecting our plant. At one point we witness footage of the largest ever recorded glacier calving, an iceberg larger than the island of Manhattan calves from a glacier in about 75 minutes. Politicians and energy corporation executives should be made sit a mandatory viewing of this. Seize any opportunity you get to go see this on the big screen.

You can now apply to host a screening on the Chasing Ice website!

National Geographic photographer James Balog wanted to test his skepticism about climate change. With his Extreme Ice Survey, he was able to photograph undeniable changes in some glaciers. In this documentary, Balog deploys a series of time-lapse cameras to capture a long term visual record of the world's changing glaciers. The lengths to which this is accomplished is mind boggling.

It's a compelling watch and an important work. But it's the shocking final result that will amaze you. The visual of these glaciers actually melting right before your eyes will shake you to your core as it did to me.