Human Impact on Ecosystems (Ages 18+)

A documentary that gives scientific context to the controversy and debate on climate change. Accessible interviews with climatologists, glaciologists, astrophysicists and oceanographers, juxtaposed with stunning footage, bring understanding to the impact of the melting of the Arctic permafrost and release of greenhouses gases that affect our whole planet.

The Peace-Athabasca River Delta is a stunning habitat. Rivers converge in a rich, marshy wetland before draining into the Slave River. But the Delta is in trouble. Since the building of the WAC Bennett Dam in 1967, annual floodwaters--once the ecosystem's lifeblood--have become a thing of the past. The Delta is drying up, and lakes and wetlands are being replaced by brush. Species like the muskrat are disappearing. Footprints in the Delta explores the changes that have buffeted the region for several decades. Scientists, activists and Indigenous Peoples describe how lives have been fundamentally altered by the changes. And satellite images show the dramatic pace of degradation. Footprints in the Delta is essential viewing for anyone who cares about wetlands. It is a revealing account of the rapid change and environmental havoc humans can bring to a delicate ecosystem.

A poem for the planet, Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper's film Metamorphosis takes the pulse of our earth and bears witness to a moment of profound change: the loss of one world, and the birth of another. Metamorphosis captures the true scale of the global environmental crisis. Forest fires consume communities, species vanish, and entire ecosystems collapse. Economic growth, tied to increased speed of resource extraction, has created a machine with the capacity to destroy all life. But this crisis is also an opportunity for transformation. Through a tidal flow of stunning images, Metamorphosis carves a path from the present to the future, and offers a bold new vision for humanity and the world.

For almost three decades, internationally renowned Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky has been creating large scale photographs of landscapes transformed by industry: quarries, scrap heaps, factories, recycling yards, dams. Manufactured Landscapes follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country capturing the evidence and effects of China's massive industrial revolution. Rarely witnessed sites such as the Three Gorges Dam (50% larger than any other dam in the world), the interior of a factory which produces 20 million irons a year, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai's urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera. Shot in sumptuous super 16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narratives of Burtynsky's photographs, meditating on human impact on the planet without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, the film shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.