Feature film to highlight Antarctic climate change
victoria-university-of-wellington
Mon Jun 11 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Feature film to highlight Antarctic climate change
Monday, 11 June 2007, 2:49 pm
Press Release: Victoria University of Wellington
11 June 2007
Feature film to highlight Antarctic climate change
Production has begun on a $1.8 million (£600,000) film to feature scientists' perspectives of Earth’s changing climate, how and why it is happening and the options we have for responding.
The film stems from a unique collaborative venture between Victoria University of Wellington, with its history of Antarctic research, and Oxford University, with its world-leading centres for the Earth and Environmental Sciences and Atmospheric Physics. DOX Productions, an award-winning company, will produce the film.
With the working title, The Tipping Point, the film will be produced and directed by documentary film-makers David Sington and Dr Simon Lamb (pictured) who collaborated 10 years ago to produce the acclaimed 8-hour BBC television series Earth Story. Mr Sington’s most recent film to premiere later in the year, In the Shadow of the Moon, features interviews with the Apollo astronauts, and also has a strong environmental theme. Dr Lamb was a post-doctoral fellow at Victoria in 1985 and is currently a Senior Research Fellow in Science Communication, a position based at both universities.
Professor Peter Barrett, Director of Victoria’s Antarctic Research Centre, says the stars of the film will be the young men and women who are working around the world to gather data to both document and understand changes in past and present climate on land, at sea and in the polar regions.
“The Antarctic will figure prominently on account of the large uncertainties in both magnitude and timing of the response of this huge and relatively unknown region to climate change,” Professor Barrett says.
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Professor Philip England, Head of Earth Sciences at Oxford, says the film’s main thesis is that people worldwide will be willing to make substantial changes in their way of life only if they understand the consequences of the present high levels of greenhouse gas emissions and are offered the hope of practical solutions to reduce them.
“While climate change has featured prominently in the last year in the popular press through major reviews, such as the Stern report of October, 2006, and the IPCC 2007 reports, the issue seems too vast and complex to compel a well-directed response. The goal of this film is to distil the key issues in a convincing and human way so that all who see it will be able to contribute to the solution of this most challenging problem.”
Filming will take place in 2007 and 2008, with release for both cinema and in DVD format in 2009. Both universities are financially supporting the project, and major funding from UK-based organisation, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, is under discussion. Both Victoria and Oxford Universities will be actively seeking private sponsorship for the project.
ENDS
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