Earth – Page 34 – Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

The Sun comes out at Night

During a severe thunderstorm in Saskatchewan, Canada Buckminster Fuller* appears, disappears, then re-appears in a gas station parking lot discussing World War I, the shift from animal/human power to the machine, as well as the law of thermodynamics and evolution. If I were a futurist, I would predict that the world Buckminster Fuller describes in the 20th Century, or the world we are familiar with today in the early 21st Century will be a very different world in the 22nd Century. Acquiring energy is the core concern of all living entities such as photosynthesis, or vegetable/animal matter. Along with water…

A Tree Gets in the Way

We are a determined species. We make plans and calculate in advance how to accomplish a goal. These calculations are not always completely accurate wherein something unanticipated can occur. On a warm spring day, I saw this house on a truck being moved to an empty lot. It looked like it would take maybe a half hour to position the house. That was until its progress was prevented by a tree in the corner of the lot. This delayed the operation until the tree could be removed.

Shadows from Magnets

I not only want to locate my place, but I also want to discover where my place is in that place. I desire to experience the illuminated moment, moments which for me can only be perceived when one calms the memory to pierce the shadows and to lift a veil. The story for me is in how light contrasts the absence of light in shaping forms within a given frame of time and space. The presence of shadows for instance on a landscape is largely determined by three factors: wind speed, the distance of the clouds from a particular location…

Fire & Water

For many years I lived near the village of Volcano, Hawai’i in a native Ohia rainforest. My house was about ten kilometers from the entrance to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park so I would go there whenever I could. Here was a place that displayed the essential forces of earth, air, fire and water, the very elements that form our existence. This had quite a profound impact on me, especially when new land suddenly appeared when only moments before it did not exist. Once the new land was established, birds, insects and seeds would establish themselves beginning with Hapuu ferns (a…

Air & Earth

There are certain places that sustain me. Places where the elements of nature are so evocatively displayed, that my desire to return and experience them again never loses its hold. The Big Island of Hawaii is 20 degrees latitude north of the equator giving it a climate with a narrow range of temperatures along with continuous prevailing winds. Above 30 degrees latitude north and 30 degrees latitude south of the equator cold air from the Arctic and cold air from Antarctica mingles vigorously with hot air from the tropics. It is largely this interaction of cold air from the poles…

Burning Farm House

While driving down Highway 13 in Saskatchewan, Canada I noticed some unusual black smoke on the horizon which turned out to be an early 20th Century farmhouse. I quickly found an empty field nearby and positioned my camera for about an hour until the farmhouse merged into the prairie landscape.

How amazingly unlikely is your birth

What could a cosmology of one person’s life look like? A daughter examines the life and premature death of her father, who had a troubled relationship with the psychiatric medical establishment and was passionate about ecology, politics and space travel.

Film Categories: Earth