Acclaimed photographer James Balog was once a skeptic about climate change. But through his Extreme Ice Survey, he discovers undeniable evidence of our changing planet.
ABOUT
Synopsis
Acclaimed photographer James Balog was once a skeptic about climate change. But through his Extreme Ice Survey, he discovers undeniable evidence of our changing planet. In Chasing Ice, Balog deploys revolutionary time-lapse cameras to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Travelling with a team of young adventurers across the brutal Arctic, Balog risks his career and his well-being in pursuit of the biggest story facing humanity. As the debate polarizes America, and the intensity of natural disasters ramps up globally, Chasing Ice depicts a heroic photojournalist on a mission to deliver fragile hope to our carbon-powered planet.
FILMMAKERS
Jeff Orlowski - director
Filmmaker Jeff Orlowski most recently served as director, producer, and cinematographer on the Sundance Award-Winning film, Chasing Ice. Orlowski’s feature length documentary was invited to screen at the White House, the United Nations and the United States Congress and has captured over 30 awards from film festivals around the world. It went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song, and has screened on all seven continents. As founder of exposurelabs, a production company geared toward socially relevant filmmaking, Orlowski, 29, has served as director and producer of short film projects and online/broadcast commercial work. His clients have included Apple, General Motors, Stanford University, Blackboard, and the Jane Goodall Institute. His work has aired on the National Geographic Channel, CNN and NBC and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, NPR and Popular Mechanics. He has travelled on tour representing the Sundance Institute, President Obama’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities, and the National Endowment of the Arts, and he is currently juggling more projects than he knows what to do with. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
James Balog - lead
James Balog has been a leader in photographing, understanding and interpreting the natural environment for three decades. An avid mountaineer with a graduate degree in geography and geomorphology, James is equally at home on a Himalayan peak or a whitewater river; the African savannah or polar icecaps. To reveal the impact of climate change, James founded the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most wide-ranging, ground-based, photographic study of glaciers ever conducted. National Geographic showcased this work in the June 2007 and June 2010 issues. The project is also featured in the 2009 NOVA documentary Extreme Ice, as well as in the feature-length documentary, Chasing Ice.