VIFF: Burning Ice

http://wwf.ca/viff Even as the adventure unfolded, we knew that it would be difficult to convey what we were experiencing to people at home. The word we used was "ineffable." On Friday, I caught the world premiere of Burning Ice, a film that attempts to capture quite a similar voyage - except instead of high school students, the travelers on board the ship are well-known musicians and artists including Jarvis Cocker, Leslie Feist, K.T. Tunstall, Martha Wainwright, Robyn Hitchcock, and Ryûichi Sakamoto. Directed by Peter Gilbert, the film actually does a remarkable job of conveying the magnitude of the landscape and the profound connection the visitors make with the land and its people. The music ain't half bad, either. It's just plain impossible to describe how it feels to stand on a melting glacier. But whether you're standing there with some of the youth who will inherit this Earth, or with Jarvis Cocker, you will spend the rest of your life trying to do justice to that moment. Tonight, I'm proud to be introducing this film on behalf of WWF and facilitating a discussion after the screening. Tomorrow I'm heading back to Toronto, my head filled with images and ideas from the many powerful films I got to see at VIFF. I hope that those of you in Vancouver have had a chance to be similarly inspired, and that those of you elsewhere will check out some of these films at other festivals or on DVD. But it's not over yet! WWF's Heaven and Earth series of environmental films continues throughout the rest of the festival this week.