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Film Archive

Welcome to the archive of previous PFF Selected Films.

All 2023 Films

Filmmaker
Online Roundtable

Held on Thursday, September 21, 2023

Photo of a yellow trimaran floating off the coast of East Greenland. Ice and mountains are visible in the background.
Medium Length Film (25:06); French/English Subtitles

In the summer of 2022 a team left France with a folding trimaran to study long range pollution in East Greenland. This film is the journey of a skipper, a chemist and a filmmaker traveling between the nights and icebergs to collect samples and document the experience.

 

Contact: contact@arcticlab.fr

Photo Credit: Anne Beaugé

Photo of person with binoculars

Photo Credit: Still from the film/Arctic Utopias Team

Viewing of this film requires a password: arctic_U21
Medium Length Film (21:52); Greek, Finnish, Yakutian/Sakha/English Subtitles

Arctic Utopias is a collective and experimental documentary film about the changing Arctic. Filmmakers were sourced through an Arctic wide-open call. Daniela, Lana and Matti were chosen as directors, as they represent a variety of viewpoints to the region’s future and status quo. The aim of the film was to be a platform for the voices stemming straight from the region – for stories of how the shifting of inner and outer worlds feels. Simultaneously the film invites the viewer to explore and question their relationship to the Arctic.

 

The Arctic is warming up to six times faster than the rest of the world due to climate change. At the same time, it's often represented as an exotic, romanticized and untouched place that is beyond the powers of the postmodern world. Experimentally and collectively - made during the Covid pandemic – this essayistic documentary film provided an opportunity to explore change as a concept, and challenge conventional ways of filmmaking and the representations of this region.

 

Contact: dtoma0906@gmail.com / arcticutopias@gmail.com

A person stands at the edge of a rapidly eroding permafrost bluff in Arctic Alaska

Photo Credit: USGS/Public Domain

Short Film (2:41); English

The Arctic region is warming faster than anywhere else in the United States. Understanding the rates and causes of coastal change in Alaska is needed to identify and mitigate hazards that might affect people and animals that call Alaska home.

Contact:  ppearsall@usgs.gov
 

A person is drilling ice, only feet and the tool are seen. It is really dark.

Photo Credit: Elena Popova

Short Film (6:56); No Vocals

Moments of a long research expedition on a vessel frozen in an ice floe. An inside look at the work in the polar regions for those desiring to dive under the ice.

Contact: 4elenapopova@gmail.com
 

Image has a fascinating emperor penguin standing, looking toward the Southern Ocean in katabatic winds. It is waiting to complete its molting period. The ground is icy, the sky is cloudy and the emperor penguin is ready to join the wildlife adventure.

Photo Credit:  Sinan Yirmibeşoğlu

Medium Length Film (21:51); Turkish/English Subtitles

A documentary about the first observations of molting emperor penguins on Horseshoe Island, Antarctic Peninsula, recorded by a scientist. This research was published in the Polar Research Journal; a contribution to polar science for a better future for penguins.

Contact: sinan.yirmibesoglu@tubitak.gov.tr

Children and adults decorating small 8-inch cedar boats with a large white plastic Arctic buoy in the foreground.

Photo Credit: Float Your Boat

Short Film (4:14); English

This short film  introduces and spotlights  the Float Your Boat outreach project of the International Arctic Buoy Programme developed by David Forcucci (US Coast Guard, retired), and Ignatius Rigor (Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA) and co-managed by Sarah Johnson (Wild Rose Education). Learn more at www.FloatBoat.org.

Contact: arcticfloatboat@gmail.com
 

Homo Sapiens 2 - Patricio Quezada.jpg

Photo Credit: Regnum

Sneak Peek (2:30); Spanish/English Subtitles

Eight scientific teams are navigating the effects of global warming in Antarctica to uncover data to combat climate change, even as glaciers are already retreating, and different animals are gearing up to face it.

Contact: regnumideas@gmail.com
 

A photo of mountains, snow, ice.

Photo Credit:  Caroline Wexler

Medium Length Film (27:48); English

For over 75 years, a team of students and researchers embark annually on a 80+ mile ski traverse across the Juneau Icefield in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. The two-month expedition allows these students to study climate change at Earth's most sensitive margins. The film follows the perspective of several expedition members, each describing their unique experience from the icefield.

Contact:  contact.carolwex@gmail.com
 

 Photo of mountains and a glacier with drone flying above. Includes the title of the movie.

Photo Credit: Bastien Ruols

Short Film (5:20); English/French Subtitles

In the summer of 2022, the CRAG group from the University of Lausanne acquired an unprecedentedly large set of radar data over the Otemma glacier, Switzerland, using a newly developed drone-based system. This short film shows how this was done, from accessing the glacier to the display of the first results.

Contact:  bastien.ruols@gmail.com
 

Photo of ice cores stored in metal cylinders stacked on shelves in NSF’s ice core facility.

Photo Credit: Alissa Choi

Short Film (2:45); English

Ice cores can tell us a variety of information about Earth’s climate, atmosphere, and ocean systems in the past and present. Many are stored right here at the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility in Lakewood, Colorado. Join me on a virtual tour of the facility to learn more about what goes into accessing this ice as well as the significance of deciphering the information this ice holds!

Contact: achoi34@wisc.edu
 

In the middle of the photo, a researcher wearing black colored polar clothes looking at the camera. He hauls his stuff up the hill with an orange-colored sledge on an ice-covered slope. There are gray, overcast cumulus clouds in the air, and a storm is approaching from the Southern Ocean. A research ship is waiting in the anchorage in the bay and researchers are working fast to finish their research before the storm.

Photo Credit:  Sinan Yirmibeşoğlu

Short Film (1:05); No Vocals

Scientists conducting research in Antarctica never leave the continent after working there once. Even though the continent pushes people to their extreme limits in the most difficult field conditions on Earth, it is impossible to escape its magic. This researcher's Antarctic field work trailer will impress you, too.

Contact:  sinan.yirmibesoglu@tubitak.gov.tr
 

During the scientific research expedition organized by Turkey to the North Pole, the scientists, who carried out their routine studies at the 11th sampling point at 80.1 latitude, had to interrupt their work in the first hour of the sampling, when a polar bear approached the ship. Although the reason for their approach to the ship is not known exactly, it is known that polar bears, one of the creatures most affected by climate change, have approached people in recent years due to the increase in temperature, the melting of sea ice and their inability to find food. This photo shows that bear sitting on a patchwork of ice and water.

Photo Credit: Şebnem Coşkun

Short Film (5:23); Turkish/English Subtitles

The Arctic, a polar region located to the far north of the Earth, has been most affected by global climate change in recent years, resulting in the rapid melting of ice and warming. This has greatly affected wildlife, particularly the polar bear.

Polar bears, the world's largest land predators, have been designated as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List due to declining populations. They are most likely to lose habitat in the Arctic territories of Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russia, and the US (Alaska) if the melting trend continues, putting these marine mammals' survival at risk.

Contact:  scoskunn01@gmail.com/ Instagram: sebnemcoskun
 

Tristan Visser playing his guitar with a bow on board the sailing vessel 'Mae West' in the waters of Greenland.

Photo Credit: Esther Kokmeijer

Short Film (9:30); Dutch/English Subtitles 

Is it possible to make music with a whale? Dutch musician Tristan Visser sailed to Greenland to find out if a whale would react to his guitar playing. If the animals react to music, would this also mean they can hear human made noises produced in the ocean?

Contact:  info@tristanvisser.com
 

Two Māori carvers; one, a man in his late 20's with a mustard yellow beanie, grins at the camera while, the other, a cheery 40 something year old with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, laughs at his colleague. Their arms are crossed holding their tools in their hands. The foreground is the edge of the sea ice with snow blowing across it, and the background is a blurry closeup of their wood carvings over an ocean.
Medium Length Film (13:42); English

Two talented carvers from each end of Aotearoa New Zealand take their whakairo (carving) to Antarctica in response to New Zealand's kaitiakitanga (guardianship) of the world’s largest marine protected area - The Ross Sea.

Contact: www.elantimedia.com
 

Photo Credit: Vanessa Wells | Elanti Media

All 2022 Films

Alaska's Salmon In A Changing Climate

Seabird Memorial

Qikiqtait SIKU Case study 2020
Kohtr'elneyh: Remembering Forward | Inside Alaska's Just Transition Summit
Listening to Savoonga
Alaska Subsistence - Spirit of the Ancestors 
Qikiqtait SIKU Case Study 2020
Overwintering fires in boreal forests
The Arctic Halocline 2D
After Ice
Alaska Thaw
Into the polar night 3D
Shrinking ice
Shrinking Ice, AGF-212
Icy Bay Mega Tsunami
Field of Vision - Utuqaq
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