Documentary – UK / UK Premiere
Showing @ Filmhouse 1, Tue 21 June @ 20:00 & Filmhouse 2, Wed 22 June @ 21:55
Peter Gilbert / UK / 2010 / 79 mins /
Iván Torres Hdez / Finland / 2011 / 7 mins
Screening with Iván Torres Hdez’s Constancy, both films share a similar scenic cinematography when depicting the icy environments they inhabit. Yet while Hdez’s seven minute short remains an innocent, almost tender film of life aboard the Finnish Icebreaker Urho, there’s something too commercialised and patronising about Peter Gilbert’s Burning Ice. As musicians and artists including Jarvis Cocker, KT Tunstall, Martha Wainwright and Marcus Brigstocke all come together to investigate the devastating effects of our carbon footprint on the arctic climate, they use their newly-found inspiration to write songs, plays, stand-up sets and recordings to express a moral and political outlook on an issue we are still collectively adamant to ignore and even deny.
Basically, this project seems to express the notion that we, the public, can’t understand climate change issues unless a famous artist writes a song about it (an opinion which co-producer and founder of Cape Farewell David Buckland almost literally outlines). Now it’s going to be hard for me to sit here and criticise a film on climate change isn’t it? Yes it’s good that the film has been made as having some insight is better than none, and the documentary is full of relevant science as the artists share a boat with a group of geoscientists and oceanographers. That doesn’t mean however that the integrity of the project is immune from criticism; and that’s the problem with this documentary as it’s more about the celebrities than the issues. Isn’t it fantastic to see all of these privileged westerners go on a trip around Greenland and explore cultures they’ve never experienced before? I reckon KT Tunstall’s G major chord will directly prevent the melting and collapsing of the Siberian Shelf.
As I say, I’m not going to get too bitter about it – but if you want to be roused and invigorated by climate change struggles, watch Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth or BBC Four’s series of documentaries on geothermal, ecocidal concerns. And get this: one of the artists in Gilbert’s film decides to release a cylinder of CO2 to make an ironic point about how easy it would be for us to all save that amount. If you’re going to do that, why not release a shitload to be ironic about how much damage 747s do and how we should have one less holiday a year? Even though the shipmates argue about it, semi-agreeing that it was a good artistic point, it’s that kind of stunt which undermines the character of the science which is striving to protect the environment from ignorance.
Musician Ryuichi Sakamoto is the most interesting artist to embark on the project, as his experiments with ‘sound fishing’ seem the most heartfelt, genuine and inspirited. His true awe at the power of our climate resonates throughout the film and reflects something we can all share and empathise with. So as catchy as Tunstall’s song Uummannaq is, I’ll save my pennies.