"We are the renters of this world, not its masters," reminds Pooshkar, a precocious 13-year-old member of a youth environmental defense group in India. He and his fellow voraciously energetic students actively rally against the use of plastics. In Africa, a renaissance man teaches citizens to harness solar power to cook food. In Papua New Guinea, villagers practice sustainable logging to save their rainforests. A woman in London uses her PR savvy to start a successful environmental communications firm. Self-described "hillbillies" in Appalachia battle the big business behind strip mining. In this rich and inspiring documentary, director Brian Hill takes us around the world to find the ordinary people taking action in the fight to save our environment.
Hill and his cinematographers create a real sense of ambience in each of the countries and communities they visit. Conversations with West Virginians are punctuated by footage of mountaintops surrounding their homes being dynamited; Papua New Guineans talk among the giant trees being decimated by commercial logging. A visit to the Global Seed Vault built in the Norwegian permafrost in Svalbard, Norway is particularly ethereal. Driving Climate of Change is the beautiful narration written by British poet Simon Armitage and mellifluously voiced by Tilda Swinton.
Film Information
Year: 2009Length: 85 minutes
Language: English
Country: USA U.K.
Premiere: North American
Cast & Credits
Producer: Katie BailiffDirector: Brian Hill
Screenwriter: Simon Armitage
Editor: Stuart Briggs
Executive Producer: Kevin Wall, Kit Williams
Director of Photography: Roger Chapman, Tony Coldwell, Michael Timney, Wayne Vinten
Primary Cast: Tilda Swinton (narrator)
Composer: Nitin Sawhney