Posts tagged with "Film"

Rebuilding Paradise
Ron Howard, director

Film

Rebuilding Paradise

9 March, 2020

On 8 November 2018, residents of the town of Paradise, California, evacuated through a forest of flames. Although it was past 9 a.m., the sky was black from the fire that had traveled 8 miles in just a few hours and now completely surrounded the town. The aftermath of the Camp Fire, as documented in… Read More
Okavango: River of Dreams (Director's Cut)
Dereck Joubert and Beverly Joubert, directors

Film

Okavango

9 March, 2020

Lightning crackles across the sky, lions roar as they tussle over a freshly killed waterbuck, raindrops smack the parched earth, and elephants trumpet. These are the sights and sounds of the Okavango River, the subject of a new documentary film by National Geographic explorers-in-residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert. The Okavango is a distinctive river. More… Read More
Spaceship Earth
Matt Wolf, director

Film

Spaceship Earth

9 March, 2020

In 1991, eight adventurers donned designer astronaut jumpsuits and began a 2-year mission in a 3-acre airtight terrarium in the Arizona desert called Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 being the environment the rest of us earthlings inhabit). A media circus, complete with cringeworthy celebrity cameos, surrounded the launch of the massive project that would be a… Read More
The Social Dilemma
Jeff Orlowski, director

Film

The Social Dilemma

9 March, 2020

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.” This provocative observation, attributed to Yale computer scientist Edward Tufte, hits home in The Social Dilemma, as former executives from Facebook, Pinterest, Google, Twitter, and YouTube describe how they built online platforms to attract and reward our attention, with the goal… Read More
The Reason I Jump
Jerry Rothwell, director

Film

The Reason I Jump

9 March, 2020

It is difficult to know the mind of another person; it is harder still when that person has autism. Yet, understandably, a fervent desire of parents of autistic people is to know the minds of their children. In 2007, Naoki Higashida, an autistic 13-year-old boy in Japan, published The Reason I Jump, a description of… Read More
The Cost of Silence
Mark Manning, director

Film

The Cost of Silence

9 March, 2020

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion unleashed a catastrophic amount of oil, gas, and other toxic compounds into the Gulf of Mexico. As the massive spill overwhelmed responders, federal agencies approved the use of chemical dispersants by aerial spraying and injection into the oil plume at its source. Dispersants break up oil, which is highly toxic… Read More
Rise of the Mammals
HHMI Tangled Bank Studios

Film

A new film offers a glimpse into the Cenozoic ascension of mammals

24 October, 2019

We live in the Age of Mammals, yet warm-blooded beasts are still overshadowed by dinosaurs. Even when considering the last great shake-up to life’s story, when an enormous asteroid triggered a mass extinction that decimated dinosaurs and gave mammals a shot at terrestrial expansion, we are often more focused on the terrible lizards lost than… Read More
Human Nature
Adam Bolt, director

Film

Slick visuals and compelling interviews render gene editing intelligible to nonexperts

20 August, 2019

If you could cure a child suffering from sickle cell anemia, would you? This is the question at the center of Human Nature, a new documentary directed by Adam Bolt about the revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. The documentary is visually stunning, thought-provoking, informative, and tightly focused on human health—which means that there are… Read More
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Michael Dogherty, director

Film

Godzilla’s extraordinary growth over time mirrors an increase in Anthropocene angst

28 May, 2019

It would be a mistake to dismiss Godzilla: King of the Monsters as mindless pap or escapist fantasy. It is the 35th film in a series stretching to 1954, easily the longest in world cinema history. This fact alone invites scholarly attention, for icons are always a reflection of their times, and few have enjoyed… Read More
Bedlam
Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, director

Film

Bedlam

18 March, 2019

The public health statistics presented in Bedlam, the new film by director Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, are horrifying: 350,000 people with mental illness sleep on U.S. streets each night, the nation’s three largest prisons are its three largest psychiatric facilities, and half the people killed in confrontations with police are mentally ill. The causes explored in… Read More