By Alexander Ortega
Slug Magazine
ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
Directors: Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky
Imagine yurt-like structures made of elephant tusks. Then shift your vision to bright-green pools of lithium in a middle-of-nowhere desert, with pipes flowing the alien-looking liquid from one area to an adjacent one. Grimy machinery forges red-hot iron shapes then cools the metal objects in pools with nary a human hand. These images, together, may seem like they’re from a space western or a novel set in a dystopian future, but they’re contemporary, real-life images from Earth, depicted in Sundance documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch.
Read the full review here.
Read MoreWorld-famous environmental photographer Edward Burtynsky and IDEAS host Paul Kennedy both grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario. In fact, their childhood homes were less than 300 metres apart, and young paperboy Paul delivered a daily dose of newspaper comic strips to future visual artist Ed.
Paul and Ed lived parallel lives close to — but separate from — each other. When they eventually met in 2008, they talked about one day doing an episode of IDEAS, in which they'd return home to revisit their shared roots. Well, they did it: welcome to Paul and Ed's Excellent Adventure. The two made plans to visit the old GM plant on Ontario Street where both of their fathers had worked. The plant was bought by General Motors in 1929 to manufacture cars after World War I and was the largest employer in St. Catharines until its closure in 2010.
Listen to the full episode here.
Read MoreBy Norm Wilner | NOW Toronto
But co-directors Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier surprised the room by giving away the $100,000 cash prize
The Toronto Film Critics Association awarded Anthropocene: The Human Epoch the Rogers best Canadian film award – and a cash prize of $100,000 – last night. It’s a despairing documentary about humanity’s devastation of the natural world, but Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier – who co-directed the film with photographer Edward Burtynsky – made a very optimistic move.
Having won the TFCA’s top award twice before, for their previous Burtynsky collaborations Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark (which claimed the TFCA’s second $100,000 purse in 2014), Baichwal and de Pencier announced they would not be accepting the prize money this time, instead dividing it into thirds and donating it to the young directors of the other nominated films, Sofia Bohdanowicz (Maison Du Bonheur) and Sadaf Foroughi (Ava), and to TIFF’s Share Her Journey project, for which Baichwal is an ambassador.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Bruce Demara
Toronto Star
ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch, a film that chronicles humankind’s devastating impact on the environment, has been awarded the $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award by the Toronto Film Critics Association.
The award, the biggest annual prize in Canadian cinema, was given to filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier at the association’s annual gala Tuesday night by actor, writer and director Don McKellar. Photographer Edward Burtynsky shares the prize with them.
Read the full article here.
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