A stark account of a natural disaster in motion

Following several sell-out screenings on the island last year, multi-award-winning documentary Chasing Ice is making a return to Bermuda.

If you have not seen it yet I urge you not to miss the chance again — Jeff Orlowski’s ground-breaking documentary presents irrefutable evidence of climate change and tackles head on one of the biggest threats to the survival of our planet.

The Bermuda Documentary Film Festival is screening the documentary — the winner of 23 festival awards — for a second time due to popular demand. The film was also shown here last year as part of Energy Week by the Department of Energy.

Using time-lapse cameras, environmentalist James Balog offers a visual record of how the ice caps are disappearing. Compressing four years into just a few seconds, he allows us to see this these seemingly permanent fixtures melting away before our very eyes.

We bare witness to the largest iceberg ever filmed breaking up — a 7.4 cubic kilometre mass of land collapsing under itself is quite a sight to behold — a catastrophe caught on camera.

The film opens with global warming naysayers who take up airtime on Fox News including, no less, the owner of America’s weather channel.

Balog himself admits that he was once sceptical about climate change but all that is long in the past.

Balog set up his Extreme Ice Survey in 2007 to monitor the rate at which numerous icebergs were disappearing in Greenland, Montana, the Alps, Canada and Bolivia.

These icebergs and ice sheets are like the canaries in the coal mine — they are the first places we can see climate change having an effect.

The beauty of the landscape is breath taking — from great tower block sized ice blocks and upturned icebergs whose captured bubbles have turned it a vivid blue, to gargantuan icy gateways of epic proportions.

We see how Balog has put absolutely everything into this project. The film includes heartfelt accounts by his family members who are trying finding ways to deal with his physically and emotionally draining, treacherous and time-consuming occupation.

It gives the documentary a human element.

One thing that the film did not include was footage of the wildlife. We have seen so many documentaries about the plight of the polar bear or the whale but this doc looks squarely at the demise of the habitat that is changing the course of our future and could mark the eventual demise of all of us.

Prepare yourself — this is a no holds barred account of a natural disaster in motion. This stark record of the fragility of our earth will bear down on your conscience.

It is both worrying and devastating and it will make you think about your role and what you can do, from this day on.

Chasing Ice screens at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute on February 17 as part of teh Weekend Film Series. Tickets are $15 and available from the Oceans Gift Shop or by calling 297-7314.