‘Chasing Ice’ takes a long view – The Sacramento Bee
December 21, 2012
“The visuals are riveting, and they drive home the point that the film makes in voiceover narration by Balog, interviews with glaciologists and climate scientists and occasional charts and graphs: Ice is melting at an alarmingly unglacial pace.”
‘Chasing Ice’: Pictures tell an alarming story – The Kansas City Star
December 20, 2012
“‘Chasing Ice’ will make an impact, that’s for sure. Whether it can be said to have been effective remains to be seen. This portrait of a man on a mission moves us, not by showing us what we’ve already lost, but what’s still at stake.”
‘Chasing Ice’ pursues chilling evidence of climate change – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
December 20, 2012
“But the film is also a tribute to the art of nature photography, by Balog and director and cinematographer Jeff Orlowski, who works with Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey group. Together they capture endless impressionistic variations of ice dying right before our eyes and leaving a beautiful corpse.”
Chasing Ice: James Balog and His Extreme Ice Survey – CineSource Magazine
December 20, 2012
“Directed by Jeff Orlowski, “Chasing Ice” is the best-produced and most important environmental documentary since Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Orlowski tells two stories here: The life and work of celebrated photographer James Balog and the melting of our Earth caused by massive, man-made carbon dioxide emissions.”
The Cold Hard Truth – America Magazine
December 17, 2012
“Take the time to see “Chasing Ice,” even if it is not the type of film you would typically see. These are not typical times. We must begin to act. In the wake of a devastating hurricane on the East Coast of the United States, the United States may finally be taking steps to address climate change. Ordinary citizens must take on a greater role too. We cannot dwell on our sadness, but work to provide hope for our children, who will suffer the most if we continue to ignore the disaster on the horizon.”
Chasing Ice Review – Little White Lies
December 14, 2012
“What we really should be thinking is that this is actually rather bad, and the incessant melting of glaciers in Greenland and the North and South Poles could be potentially cataclysmic news for millions of people. But it’s hard to muster a feeling of awe and disgust simultaneously, and so Chasing Ice’s message is somewhat muddied. Damn all this destruction for looking so damn beautiful!”
Chasing Ice Review – Financial Times
December 13, 2012
“Balog’s “Extreme Ice Survey” – a plan to plant time-lapse cameras across large stretches of the western sub-Arctic – is, like the film, a project of heroic, Herzogian endeavour. Mad, you might say. But probably not as mad as what the rest of us are doing about climate change: namely almost nothing.”
Chasing Ice (2012) – Flick Feast
December 13, 2012
“Chasing Ice is a scientific video document which establishes beyond doubt the reality of global warming, and is, as such, an important and undismissable entry into any climate debate. It is an effective educational tool because it combines environmental concern not only with a compelling scientific argument but also with the fabulous natural beauty of professionally photographed ice-scapes. I would frankly question the moral integrity of anyone who can walk away from this film without being significantly affected by its message.”
Chasing Ice-Hard Truth – San Diego Source
December 6, 2012
“This film does not pound the table, nor is there a heavy emphasis on the science of global warming per se. Like all things indirectly experiential, it is akin to a Rorschach test where the audience brings their preexisting knowledge to bear in order to focus on and explain the actual natural events they are hearing and seeing before them. Those who believe the least are likely to be changed the most.
“Chasing Ice” is a gift to us all.”
Film Review: Chasing Ice – Cine-Vue
December 2012
“With Chasing Ice, Balog and Orlowski have made not only one of this year’s finest documentaries, but also one of the most gently persuasive, user-friendly discourses on climate change to date. Whilst the elusive Best Documentary Feature Academy Award (for which it’s made the shortlist) may escape a film so passionately focused on one defined viewpoint on a hugely divisive sociopolitical issue, even sceptics may find their horizons ever so slightly expanded by this powerfully visual, ‘tip of the iceberg’ think piece.”
Chasing Ice – Close-Up Film
December 2012
“Chasing Ice’s sharp mixture of documentary storytelling and landscape photography works very well. Criticism of man’s role in climate change doesn’t drag the film down like a dead weight as in previous documentaries. It wins the battle against both climate change sceptics and those who ignore its relevance: the images are strong enough to attract and convince both sets of people.”
“Chasing Ice” and Dramatic pictures of global warming – Denver post
November 23, 2012
“The scale of the glaciers, and the almost hallucinogenic clarity of the images, make the resulting footage, based on three years’ shooting, most impressive. One piece of ice we see breaking off is said to be the size of lower Manhattan. Balog remarks that the ice masses he photographs are as individual as human faces, and what we see sometimes does resemble portraiture.”
Jeff Orlowski’s Chasing Ice documents the hard reality of global warming – Denver Westword
November 22, 2012
“If you recently had a close encounter with the howling demon known as Hurricane Sandy, you might have a renewed belief in global warming. If not, consider yourself lucky, then see Chasing Ice, director Jeff Orlowski’s beautiful yet sobering documentary about the world’s rapidly melting ice caps. His guide is James Balog, a renowned nature photographer who has become obsessed with documenting the staggering speed with which the icebergs of Greenland, Iceland and Alaska are crumbling into the sea.”
Review: “Chasing Ice” is a powerful look at glacier, climate – Los Angeles Times
November 22, 2012
“With folks still recovering from the recent Superstorm Sandy, the release of “Chasing Ice” seems particularly timely. The before and after imagery of Balog’s project speaks for itself, with the power and strange beauty of the evolving landscape strong evidence that something is indeed happening, now and fast.”
Film Review: Chasing Ice – San Francisco Bay Guardian
November 22, 2012
“Even wild-eyed neocons might reconsider their declarations that global warming is a hoax after seeing the work of photographer James Balog, whose images of shrinking glaciers offer startling proof that our planet is indeed being ravaged by climate change (and it’s getting exponentially worse).”
Movie Review: ‘Chasing Ice’ – Daily Bruin
November 21, 2012
“Balog also refrains from overwhelming his audience with too many scientific details and makes the data easy to understand. He explains his methods and how he interprets his results without coming across as boring. It is hard to watch an avalanche on screen or see the extreme erosion of glaciers over a short period of time and not realize that Balog is clearly onto something.”
‘Chasing Ice’ Review: A stunning Visual Truth of Glacial Retreat – Yahoo Voices
November 20,2012
“And to those naysayers who reply that yes, some glaciers are retreating, but others are growing, “Chasing Ice” offers evidence to dispute this theory. Dr. Martin Sharp, Glaciologist, University of Alberta, Canada, responds to that statement by sharing a study where 1400 glaciers were studied in the Yukon Territory since 1958. Of those 1400, four glaciers got bigger, nearly 300 glaciers disappeared altogether and all the others were smaller. “There has to be a greenhouse element,” Sharp concludes.”
Chasing Ice – Spectrum Culture
November 14, 2012
“When the film finally presents the findings of its thesis in the photographic evidence of catastrophic shrinking of the glaciers, the effect is staggering. Orlowski’s cinematography throughout the film has been sharp and gorgeous, and it’s clear that he was at least somewhat compelled to live up to the vivid, heartbreaking majesty captured by Balog’s cameras.”
‘Chasing Ice’ against the reality of melting glaciers – Boston Globe
November 16, 2012
“What Balog sees (and what Orlowski sees him seeing) is an epochal climatological change that is hastening toward the tipping point, if it hasn’t already gone beyond. These photographs, unfolding in time, function as both proof and relic — a record of a landscape’s memory. Behind the images lie an abiding scorn for those who are unwilling to recognize what’s happening and a lucid dread about where we’re probably heading.”
‘Chasing Ice’ is photographer’s quest to prove climate change – Chicago Tribune
November 16, 2012
“Ideologues such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh use “Al Gore” as a curse word to dismiss the overwhelming evidence that burning fossil fuels has warmed the planet and is melting the world’s ice, from pole to pole. Balog answers them with simple, blunt images.”
Chasing Ice Review: The AV Club
November 15, 2012
“As someone who admits to having harbored skepticism about climate change himself, two decades ago, Balog is trying to present an image-based response to all the denialists featured in the news montages scattered through the film, people who scoff at the numbers and lack of scientific consensus on whether global warming exists, and what it entails. The film’s beautiful, troubling footage (shot by the director, who’s been working with Balog on the EIS since 2007) of melting ice formations provides a memorable bookend to accompanying shots of storms, fires, and floods from the last few years, ones that resonate urgently with the recent Hurricane Sandy damage still in the news.”
Chasing Ice – Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times)
November 14, 2012
“At a time when warnings of global warming were being dismissed by broadcast blabbermouths as “junk science,” the science here is based on actual observation of the results as they happen. When opponents of the theory of evolution say (incorrectly) that no one has ever seen evolution happening, scientists are seeing climate change happening right now — and with alarming speed. Here is a film for skeptics who say “we don’t have enough information.”"
Chasing Ice: Seattle Backpackers Review
November 13, 2012
“I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff Orlowski, the director of Chasing Ice, about a month ago when he passed through Seattle on tour to promote this film. After listening to the trials he undertook to create this story, I wanted to see it simply to understand how he had been successful in capturing the intended material. But I also wanted to see the adventure part of the film. Who doesn’t want to taste that: The crampons and ropes and hanging above an abyss to get “the shot.”
Review: Chasing Ice – The Phoenix (Boston)
November 12, 2012
“National Geographic photographer James Balog, acclaimed for his work on vanishing animal species, goes for even mightier concerns in this valiant documentary: to provide irrefutable visual evidence of the magnitude of man-made global warming. Chasing Ice takes Balog to the far north, where he plants 25 time-lapse cameras in the deep snow of Iceland and Greenland. And what he captures on camera is horrific and even tearful: mighty glaciers eroding, collapsing before our eyes, sending melting ice and waters southward.”
‘Chasing Ice’ and Capturing Climate Change on Film – NPR
November 8, 2012
“In Hollywood these days, such epic transformations are rendered with computers and called “morphing.” Offering a lesson both to filmmakers and climate-change deniers, Chasing Icedemonstrates how much more powerful it is to capture the real thing.”
‘Chasing Ice’ Review: Watching the world melt – New Jersey Star Ledger
November 9, 2012
“Balog knew he needed more than random photographs to convince, though. So he has spent years visiting places from Alaska to Iceland – and, also, setting up high-tech security cameras to watch for him. Their time-lapse photography shows a rapidly shrinking wilderness.”
Review: ‘Chasing Ice’ Is a Gorgeous, Menacing and Necessary Wake-up Call – Film School Rejects
November 9, 2012
“Once convinced of climate change himself (which did not happen overnight), he set out to prove its effects to the world. The canary in the coal mine for the crisis is the Arctic. The collapse of glaciers in Alaska, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the thawing of permafrost are the most immediately visible effects of rising temperatures. Yet because they are incredibly far away from the world’s most populated areas, no one is seeing the change firsthand.”
Film Review: Chasing Ice – Film Journal
November 9, 2012
“The evidence amassed of global warming across these glacier masses outside the contiguous U.S. seems irrefutable (Montana’s Glacier National Park inexplicably gets little mention); for the aesthetically inclined, the images are breathtakingly beautiful. The doc also reminds of the extreme weather events (fires, floods, etc.) that seem to be a byproduct of this warming. Concerned citizens who also value glossy, high-end, high-minded docs will feel rewarded, if not a bit more frustrated by an epidemic of denial fueled by voices from the right.”
Chasing Ice – Film Forward
November 9, 2012
“In between this current of technical talk, Balog stops for a close-up view of the Arctic snow, which is riddled with gunky pollution—a more graphic look that the impact of man reaches to the top of the world than all the pointed fingers at fossil fuels. The scientists warn about the need for amelioration attempts, which seem too optimistically long term in comparison to the dire images of melting ice, which will inspire all but rabid doubters to get into survivalist mode to cope with higher tides and frequent surges. Whatever the cause or the solution, Balog powerfully shows that global warming is happening now, if the freaky weather hadn’t made you suspicious enough yet.”
‘Chasing Ice’ Documents Melting Ice Caps with Chilling Results – PBS
November 8, 2012
“I was more impressed by Balog’s photography and the real money shot for me was the work of Orlowski, who captures Balog’s team as it records a cataclysmic churning of ice, the size of whole swaths of lower Manhattan. The incredible cinematography and the bone-crushing sounds of crashing ice make the film feel like eco-sci fi fable.”
Documenting the Melt, and WE Are the Cause – New York Times
November 8, 2012
“Beginning in 2007 Mr. Balog began trying to capture images of receding glaciers using time-lapse photography, a process that required overcoming assorted physical and technological hurdles. But the film doesn’t just serve up Mr. Balog’s amazing and undeniably convincing imagery. It also records his personal struggles as knee problems threaten his ability to hike the difficult terrain to get the shots he wants. (Assistants take over some of the work.) That combination — a solitary quest with global implications — makes “Chasing Ice” as watchable as it is important.”
Review: Chasing Ice – Screen Picks
November 6, 2012
“The biggest obstacle to getting people to understand catastrophic climate change is the fact that the changes made by global warming are often difficult to convey in a visual, visceral way. And ours is a visual, visceral culture. Even Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which did so much to bring the problem to the public’s attention, had trouble making the issue feel immediate. Chasing Ice has conquered that problem, and as a result is one of the most potent pieces of cinematic agitprop in recent memory.”
Short Takes: Chasing Ice – Film Comment
November 7, 2012
“Jeff Orlowski’s capable doc is standard fare. If it weren’t for the time-lapse imagery, it would add nothing really new to the debate. But on the basis of that footage alone—astonishing sequences that condense years into seconds—it’s a must-see. Balog will be the first to warn that we’re quickly approaching the environmental tipping point.”
Chasing Ice, Go see the movie! – Huffington Post
November 6, 2012
“Skeptic or true believer in the reality of climate change, everyone really needs to see the film. If nothing else for the spectacular imagery, but hopefully because the viewer is willing to examine the physical evidence and come to their own conclusions separate of their favorite pundit’s view on the subject.”
Film Capsule: Chasing Ice – I Fear Brooklyn
November 5, 2012
“The film is beautifully shot, wrought with panoramic views of the great northwest in all its majesty. On top of which,Chasing Ice delves almost metaphorically into the personal price Balog has paid for his vigilance – sacrificing his own body and spirit in order to ensure the work is completed and preserved.”
Chasing Ice (PG-13) – Time out
November 5, 2012
“The movie’s real-life hero is James Balog, a landscape photographer whose time-lapse tableaux compress geologic eons for short attention spans. The result is dramatic evidence of crumbling ice shelves and receding glaciers, including one that shrinks by the height of the Empire State Building in a span of years.”
Chasing Ice: Stunning Time-Lapse of the Changing Arctic – Popular Mechanics
November 6,2012
“The movie, is a gripping way to drive home the reality of climate change through stunning footage from the edge of the world. And it’s also an adventure story about the physical challenge and technical struggle of keeping a scattered group of cameras operational and rolling in some of the harshest environments on Earth.”
Chasing Ice – Slant Magazine
November 3,2012
“Over the course of several years, the cameras took pictures that documented the slow but significant melting taking place. Balog used the results to produce a series of time-lapse videos in which the glaciers look like ice cubes rinsing under hot water. When combined with other before-and-after photographs, the dramatic nature of climate change becomes exceedingly clear. In just over 20 years, one of the glaciers shown in the film has shrunk by 1,200 feet—about the size of the Empire State Building.”
‘Ice’ storm: New Doc Shows How Swelling Oceans Threaten to Swallow Manhatten Altogether – The New York Observer
October 30,2012
“Chasing Ice humanizes an enormous and incomprehensible geological phenomenon with time-lapse images, putting unusually rapid geological change on breathtaking display. It also personalizes the story by focusing on one man, the photographer whose commitment to the project involved repeated knee surgery so he could keep scrabbling up icy inclines to check his cameras, and the technological difficulties of building and maintaining photo gear in the harshest conditions on the planet.”
Sundance London review: Chasing Ice
April 30, 2012
“One of the greatest problems facing climate-change scientists today, muses James Balog – photographer and former skeptic – is that ‘the public think the scientific community is still debating about this. There’s no debate’. He’s a passionate man who has undertaken what may be the most daring and important study to find visual proof of global warming to date but Chasing Ice, which won the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Excellence in Cinematography Award for U.S. Documentary in Sundance this year, followed by a screeing at Sundance London in April 2012, is more than just his story.”
Sundance London 2012: ‘Chasing Ice’
April 27, 2012
“Easily one of the most eagerly-anticipated films to feature in this year’s inaugural Sundance London festival programme was the National Geographic-funded documentary Chasing Ice (2012). Director Jeff Orlowski has painstakingly created a fascinating and powerful movie about climate change by presenting the audience with the globally important work of photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey Project – a film so eye-opening and socially important that it demands to be seen.”
Chasing Ice: Sundance Film Review
January 25, 2012
“Aesthetics and eco-advocacy are a perfect match in Chasing Ice, a doc so stuffed with eye-soothing images one prays it can seduce a climate-change skeptic or two. With vistas made for the big screen and an engaging personality at its center, theatrical prospects are better than those of the usual eco-crisis film…”
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