Tag Archives: Wildlife

Travel & Adventure Video: “Under Thin Ice” In The Arctic Ocean (2020)

“Under Thin Ice”. World Premiere at the 2020 WCFF. Natalie Dubois, Producer and Denis Blaquiere, Director.

SYNOPSIS
The Arctic is a majestic world, home to wildlife rarely seen in the south: bowhead whales, polar bears, narwhals, walrus, seals, zooplankton, algae. At the end of each spring, after long months of darkness, the sun shines for 24 hours a day and all living species gather at the floe edge — where ice meets open ocean — for a feeding frenzy. But global warming is threatening this ecosystem. Temperatures are rising and the ice sheet is melting at an alarming rate. In the last 40 years, more than 75% of the summer ice cover has disappeared.

Diving with whales, walruses and polar bears, Jill and Mario bring viewers into a majestic underwater world trying to adapt to ice loss and climate change. Viewers will travel on ice floes with Jill and Mario to Tallurutiup Imanga (also known as Lancaster Sound) in Nunavut, Canada, where they will dive with belugas and narwhals in the open Arctic Ocean. They will follow them to Greenland’s Disko Bay to explore the underside of icebergs and discover the luminescent world of algae. Back to Canada in the Naujaat region, they will swim with walruses and polar bears, the supreme predators of the Arctic. Filmed in stunning 4K, Under Thin Ice brings viewers into an awe-inspiring underwater world threatened by melting ice and rapid climate change.

The WCFF mission is to inform, engage and inspire wildlife conservation through the power of film and media.

The 10th annual WCFF in New York, NY will be a virtual event October 1-31. This is due to COVID-19 restrictions. New York State and the City of New York have not allowed movie theaters to reopen. Each day of the virtual festival will have LiveChats where the audience can interact with filmmakers, conservationists and scientists.

Travel & Wildlife: “The Future of Koalas” in Australia (NatGeo Video)

The destructive wildfires that swept through Australia destroyed the habitats for many of the island’s animals. Zoologist Jack Randall explores the efforts being made to rescue and care for the Koalas that were impacted by the wildfires.

Travel Video: “A Northern Light”, Boundary Waters Canoe Area (Patagonia)

Encompassing over 1,000,000 acres, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is in peril from a proposed toxic copper mine on the park’s boundary. Patagonia ambassador Nathaniel Riverhorse Nakadate paddles through the BWCAW to give voice to a silent, pristine place. A film by Riverhorse Nakadate and Tony Czech.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, is a 1,090,000-acre wilderness area within the Superior National Forest in northeastern part of the US state of Minnesota under the administration of the U.S. Forest Service. 

Website

Nature & Technology: “Ode To Desolation” On Fire Lookouts In North America By Lindsey Hagen

Directed by: Lindsey Hagen

Filmed and Edited by: Chris Naum
Original Score and Mix by: Brandon Hagen
Original Artwork by: Jim Henterly

“Ode to Desolation” shares the story of Jim Henterly, a naturalist, illustrator and fire lookout as he contemplates the dwindling days of Fire Lookouts in North America.

With the influence of technology and AI threatening to make his role obsolete, we look into the future and ask ourselves what connections we will maintain to keep our human interpretation of the natural world alive.

New Wildlife Videos: “The Drill – Among Rarest Primates In The World”

Roughly 20 miles off the coast of West Africa, the island of Bioko sits alone in the Atlantic Ocean. This rainforest-dominated terrain is home to one of the rarest primates in the world: the drill.
From the Show: Monkeys of Bioko https://bitly.com/2DlbNX9

New Wildlife Books: “A Lifetime in Galápagos” By Tui De Roy (Princeton)

Featuring hundreds of breathtaking color photos, this stunning book guides you into labyrinthine mangroves to observe nesting herons, to misty cloud forests to glimpse flycatchers and orchids, high onto erupting volcanoes, and into the ocean to swim with hammerhead sharks. 

A beautifully illustrated and deeply personal chronicle of De Roy’s lifelong connection with these spectacular islands

A Lifetime In Galapagos - Tui De Roy - Princeton Press - July 20 2020Tui De Roy was a year old in 1955 when her family left Europe, boarding a banana boat bound for the Pacific to lead a different sort of life in Galápagos, one of self-sufficiency and living close to nature. She grew up on the islands and returned to them often over the next five decades. Discovering photography at a young age, she has dedicated her life to recording the islands’ natural history in infinite detail. A Lifetime in Galápagos is De Roy’s intimate portrait of one of the most spectacular places on Earth, presenting the wildlife and natural wonders of Galápagos as you have never seen them before.

De Roy’s lens provides up-close encounters with orca and sperm whales, colonies of iguanas, and the giant tortoises of Alcedo Volcano. She paints unforgettable portraits of her childhood in Galápagos―the islands at night under the stars of the Milky Way, sea lions at play and on the hunt, the diverse birdlife of Galápagos, and much more.

Blending striking images with vivid prose, A Lifetime in Galápagos also discusses the threats that global warming and other environmental challenges pose to the archipelago’s unique wildlife and fragile habitats.

Read more or purchase

New Literary Podcasts: “Consider The Lemur” By Katherine Rundell (LRB)

Consider The Lemur - Katherine Rundell

It is​ probably best not to take advice direct and unfiltered from the animal kingdom – but lemurs are, I think, an exception. They live in matriarchal troops, with an alpha female at their head. 

LRB PodcastThe first lemur I ever met was a female, and she tried to bite me, which was fair, because I was trying to touch her, and humans have done nothing to recommend themselves to lemurs. She was an indri lemur, living in a wildlife sanctuary outside Antananarivo; she had an infant, which was riding not on her front, like a baby monkey, but on her back, like a miniature Lester Piggott. She had wide yellow eyes. William Burroughs, in his lemur-centric eco-surrealist novella Ghost of Chance, described the eyes of a lemur as ‘changing colour with shifts of the light: obsidian, emerald, ruby, opal, amethyst, diamond’. The stare of this indri resembled that of a young man at a nightclub who urgently wishes to tell you about his belief system, but her fur was the softest thing I have ever touched. I was a child, and the indri, which is the largest extant species of lemur, came up to my ribs when standing on her hind legs. She looked, as lemurs do, like a cross between a monkey, a cat, a rat and a human.

Nature & Adventure Videos: “Earth – Tomes” By Rhett Cutrell (2020)

Filmed and Directed by: Rhett Cutrell (ForNever Productions)

Fornever Productions specializes in telling the difficult stories in, and about, the natural world we inhabit but our 2020 Demo Reel is inspired by the stories Earth tells US. Earth: tomes. features a collection of our favorite moments over the past few years that were captured in the highest cinematic quality imaginable. We are very proud of our past work and are excited for what the future holds in the way of Outdoor Cinema

Website

World’s Top Painters: Bird Artist Vanessa Foley – “Sacred, Stylistic Beauty”

Vanessa Foley - Bird ArtistVanessa Foley is a professional bird artist based in the North of England. She regularly shows her work in notable galleries in the UK and America, has work in private collections worldwide and is a member of The VACVVM, an international cult of illustration co-founded by Aaron Horkey & Mitch Putnam.

VANESSA FOLEY - TOWARD A SECRET SKY

Vanessa Foley - Bird ArtistAn artist from Newcastle, England she is known for her intensely detailed graphite drawings and emotionally rich oil paintings. She has become a long-standing member of the Antler Gallery roster since we first exhibited her work four years ago.

Vanessa has embraced the stylistic beauty that oil painting offers an artist representing subjects accurately. The density and delicacy of the feathers in her paintings of birds of prey is stunning. In this series she has chosen to focus on the nocturnal, incorporating owls and moths. (Antler Gallery).

Website