Latest news with #OceanFilm
The Guardian
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Our Story With David Attenborough and The Herds: a new theatre of the Anthropocene
As parts of the UK swelter, this week brought yet more alarming reports of increasing temperatures, extreme weather events and dwindling chances of meeting the global 1.5C target. It was the UK's warmest spring on record and its driest in more than 50 years. Communicating the urgency of our predicament without provoking despair and hopelessness is an intractable challenge, especially when it comes to children. But two trail-blazing theatre experiences are bringing the breakdown of the natural world into urban metropolises, and raising the alarm with such immediacy that even those of us fortunate enough to live in places that have so far been relatively unaffected by the climate crisis must pay attention. Our Story With David Attenborough is a breathtaking 50-minute immersive history of the planet, from the team behind the recent film Ocean. Thanks to 24 projectors and 50 speakers, the Natural History Museum's Jerwood Gallery is transformed into the solar system, prehistoric caves, the ocean and the jungle. As in Maurice Sendak's children's classic Where the Wild Things Are, 'the walls [become] the world all around'. We swim with whales and come face to face with gorillas – as Sir David did in Life on Earth in 1979. We look from space: like last year's Booker prize-winning novel, Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, Our Story inspires the feelings of awe and protectiveness towards our planet that astronauts call 'the overview effect'. In the past, Sir David has been accused of not speaking out strongly enough on human-made ecological disaster. But the Guardian writer George Monbiot, once one of his fiercest critics, described Ocean, released for Sir David's 99th birthday this year, as the film 'I've been waiting for all my working life'. In Our Story, we journey through mass extinctions of the past and, speculatively, in the future. Without change, 'the prospect for the generations that follow is grim', the audience is warned. Next Friday, hundreds of lifesize elephants, giraffes, gazelles and animal puppets of all kinds will stampede through London's streets on their 20,000km journey from central Africa to the Arctic Circle. The Herds is the follow-up project to The Walk. In 2021, a 12-foot puppet girl, Little Amal, travelled from the Turkey-Syria border to London, to raise awareness of the refugee crisis. Little Amal reached 2 million people in 17 countries. Now her creators hope to do the same for the climate emergency. As the herd flees north, it will be joined by puppets of native species from each country it visits. Manchester is its next destination, before continuing on to Scandinavia. The project's artistic director, Amir Nizar Zuabi, has acknowledged that all such endeavours, however ambitious, are just 'water dripping on a stone'. But, as he says, over time enough drips can reshape a stone. These are visceral, sensory immersions. Like Olafur Eliasson's climate art installation The Weather Project at Tate Modern in 2003, such spectaculars invite us to reflect together – they are collective experiences. This is the theatre of the Anthropocene: vast, cataclysmic, beautiful and yet ultimately hopeful as well. They help us visualise what a different world might look like – if only politicians and corporations were made to act. The next chapter is up to us. As Sir David says at the end of Our Story, we must work towards a time when Earth becomes a planet 'with not only an intelligent species, but a wise one too'.
The Independent
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Attenborough film unveils seabed destruction caused by bottom trawling
Dramatic footage from Sir David Attenborough's landmark new film captures the destruction caused to the seabed by bottom trawling. Ocean With David Attenborough, released in cinemas to mark the renowned naturalist and TV presenter's 99th birthday, includes a sequence where the camera follows a bottom trawl, where nets are dragged with a metal beam across the seabed to catch fish. As the iron chains travel across the ocean floor they can be seen bulldozing through the habitat, stirring up silt which releases carbon and scooping up species indiscriminately. The footage is thought to be the first time the process has been filmed in such high quality, showing the scale of destruction caused by trawling. Sir David can be heard saying that 'very few places are safe' from the damaging fishing method, which occurs daily across vast swathes of the world's seabeds. In the cilp, he also highlights how trawlers, often on the hunt for a single species, discard almost everything they catch. 'It's hard to imagine a more wasteful way to catch fish,' he notes. Bottom trawling and other forms of destructive fishing are permitted in UK waters but conservationists have long been campaigning for a full ban across all marine protected areas. The impacts of bottom trawling and dredging are largely hidden from public view and are carried out without the knowledge of what marine life is being destroyed. Ocean looks to spotlight how human actions are leading to ecosystem collapse. The film also seeks to highlight the need to protect nearly a third of the oceans so they can recover from overfishing and habitat destruction, secure food for billions of people and tackle climate change. Beyond the destruction seen from bottom trawling and coral bleaching, Sir David also highlights inspiring stories from around the world, delivering the message that taking collective action will provide the opportunity for marine life to recover. 'If we save the sea, we save our world,' he says. Toby Nowlan, Keith Scholey and Colin Butfield, who directed the film, said: 'Collaborating with David Attenborough to deliver this powerful message is a dream come true for us as filmmakers and storytellers. 'We hope that sharing this unprecedented look at bottom trawling will bring greater awareness to the reality of what's happening beneath the waves and inspire audiences to protect the world around us.' Enric Sala, National Geographic Pristine Seas founder and executive producer of the film, said: 'I couldn't think of a more crucial time for this film to be available to a global audience. 'For the first time, people can see the destruction of bottom trawling unfold in front of their eyes — the heavy nets dragging across the ocean's precious floor and killing everything in their wake. 'I hope the film makes people all over the world fall in love with the ocean and inspires them to protect it.'
Sky News
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News
David Attenborough's Ocean film is 'biggest message he's ever told'
Sir David Attenborough's latest film is "the biggest message he's ever told", its directors have said - with one telling Sky News the broadcaster's final words on saving the world's oceans brought him to tears. Ocean With David Attenborough, released in cinemas this week to mark the broadcaster's 99th birthday on Thursday, mirrors his lifetime as it takes viewers through 100 years of discoveries about Earth's seas. The presenter hopes the film could help protect the planet from climate change. He filmed with crew members over two years to show coral reefs, kelp forests and the open seas, to show why healthy oceans are so important for keeping the planet stable. King Charles was among the guests at the premiere, held at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall in London, and spent time with Sir David on the red carpet. 0:58 Toby Nowlan, one of Ocean's directors, who has worked with the broadcaster for about 16 years, told Sky News entertainment correspondent Katie Spencer that the film was "very different" to any of his previous work. "Nothing has come close to how important this film is," he said. "I remember sitting on a very cold beach off Sussex, filming with him, and we were doing the opening and closing words for the film. "It was such a poignant moment. They were the most powerful words I've ever heard him say." Sir David speaks of how, after almost 100 years on Earth, he believes the planet's oceans are the most important area to protect. "And if we save the ocean, we save our world," Nowlan said. "It really hit me and, yeah, I welled up." He added that while Sir David's message is his "biggest" yet, ultimately it is one of hope. "There's been a lot of doom and gloom over the last few years - we want the take home to be: if we save our ocean, we can make a huge difference for our climate, for our fisheries, for conservation, for food security." 'The man never stops' Fellow director Keith Scholey met Sir David when he was a zoology student in the 1980s and started working with the broadcaster. "I've had this privilege all my career of working with the great man," he said. "He is a huge team worker. He does what he does incredibly well, he expects very high standards, but it's always been a really fun process working with him." He also has an "extraordinary" work ethic, Scholey said. "The man never stops and I think for him, time is very precious and you never waste time. He certainly never wastes time. And that's infectious to all the people who work with him." And Sir David still has more to come, he added. "I'm sure this isn't his last documentary at all, and in fact I know there are other things happening, but I think this is a really important one." Colin Butfield, another of the film's directors, said all the crew would get "swept up" in the broadcaster's enthusiasm and energy. 'If there's a strange creature at the end, he'll go anywhere' Actor and travel presenter Sir Michael Palin, former US secretary of state and climate envoy John Kerry, and astronaut Tim Peake were also among the celebrities and well known figures at the film's premiere. Mr Kerry told Sky News he was "genuinely optimistic" about the future of the planet and that Ocean would be "a new motivator and a strong message that people will find inescapable". He added: "We all love the ocean. Everybody thinks it's just too big to be damaged, but that's not true. All around the world, it is currently being attacked by human beings in ways that are just not sensible, but easily correctable." Sir Michael described Sir David's brilliance as a communicator - and joked about some of the situations he has filmed in over the years. "He has a lovely way of telling stories and he obviously loves discomfort. If there's some sort of strange creature at the end of it, he'll go anywhere... "He's had it far worse [than me]. I've been to various places that he's been to and I know what it's like filming in the cold, but, you know, he lies down to look at penguins. I must say, I walk through them, but there you go." He said Sir David's output "leaves all the rest of us behind". Sir Michael added: "I mean we've got to keep going because he's setting such an example. But he does it with a sense of wonder… he does it because he's amazingly curious about the world and still has this sense of wonder when he talks about what he's doing. It's really inspiring."
