Earth Protectors Featured, Reviews Film Threat
In the documentary Earth Protectors, environmental artist Anne de Carbuccia travels around the world visiting places most affected by climate change, drawing attention to the global crisis through her art and activism. Masu. Anne de Carbuccia became an environmental artist under the influence of her father, who was the publisher of the famous oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. Her interaction with Cousteau inspired her to visit the most polluted places in the world and create an art installation called “Temple of Time” in which her hourglass and skull represent life. Her goal is to document how our planet is changing by revealing what we have, what we will lose, and what we have already lost. Their journey takes us to Nepal’s Lo Manthang (Upper Mustang), where the glaciers that supplied water to the village are rapidly disappearing and on the verge of extinction. As maintaining crops in villages becomes increasingly complex, villagers are being forced to make difficult decisions: adapt or move on. Moving on means losing the culture that has been there for hundreds of years.
Pucallpa is a forest village along the Amazon River in Peru. Although it has some of the oldest trees, the forest is shrinking due to corrupt cocoa farmers and drug traffickers who plunder valuable forest land to grow illegal crops. Unarmed locals can’t stop them. Then head to Siberia, home to the world’s largest freshwater lake. However, the lake is drying up as the surrounding population grows and competes for access to valuable natural resources. The problems continue to spread. In North Africa, the climate has created a growing population of refugees fleeing their homes affected by rising temperatures. In the Maldives, plastic and other pollution are harming sea life. As the film progresses, we experience drought, rising sea levels, and rising temperatures. In the past seven years since Film Threat relaunched, we’ve seen more than our fair share of environmental documentaries. I have certainly realized the strength of this message over time. The message is always the same. We must change direction now, before we reach a tipping point where our planet’s decline accelerates.
Earth Protector contains a lot of information. Many of these were obtained from environmental experts, Drs. Julie Pullen. It serves as a common thread to explain seemingly disparate climate phenomena around the world. The questions and answers range from the geological to the political. As the title suggests, director de Carbuccia immerses himself in each location and teams up with one of his “defenders of the earth.” In Peru, for example, their guide is Shipibo, a park ranger who guides most of the deforestation. Shipibo dedicated his life to protecting the forest, but who will come after him? Each protector helps De Carbuccia find environmental artifacts that will help build the Time Sanctuary. The third act of Earth Protectors is when the environmental message kicks into fifth gear as De Carbuccia highlights the rising levels of environmental anxiety swelling amongst our youth. Here, the educational aspect of curtailing climate change comes into effect. As I mentioned before, we review a lot of environmental documentaries. They range from hopeful to cataclysmic. Earth Protectors leans toward the cataclysmic end of the spectrum but holds out that there is still hope to save us all. The information is presented in a thoughtful and very emotional way. As De Carbuccia states, “We are a geological force!” But will our force be a positive or negative one?