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Sundance 2020’s Eye on Environment Films Views the Future Through a Rearview Mirror
Unlike Hollywood reporters on a deadline, I have the luxury of waiting a week or two before writing about films I’ve been fortunate to screen at Sundance. As an independent creator of media focused on environmental issues and climate content, I love attending what I call the “Altitude without Attitude” festival. The mood at Sundance is always light, with a party atmosphere, in sharp contrast to many of the docs, which tend to be about darker subjects.
The access to A-list actors, big-name producers, and media company executives is relatively barrier-free in the relaxed settings where they appear as speakers, panelists, or just hanging out in the VIP lounges that line Main St. in Park City during the fest. CNN’s venue was of particular interest to me as you’ll read below, and is depicted above.
Okay, but what about the films you ask? First, the bad news — there were not as many docs overtly about climate change as I’d hoped given the world is finally waking up to “smell the carbon,” and the theme of this year’s SFF was “Imagining the Future.” But the good news is the ones that were about our changing climate — even if not directly mentioned — -were excellent.
There were two films of note in the environmental category; one was based on events from nearly three decades ago, the other from a bit more than a year ago. Both revealed a cautionary tale about what’s to come.
The most impactful film in what I’d call the ecological category was Spaceship Earth. This was my favorite, a fascinating close-up examination of a quirky and talented group of Biospherians who enclosed themselves in an artificial environment ambitiously created to replicate the natural world.
Using archival footage dating back to 1991, when the Biosphere’s two-year experiment began, and earlier, director Matt Wolf uses film and photos to document the formation of this unlikely group of eco-explorers and its charismatic leader, John Allen. What began in 1967 as a commune-like experiment in the free-wielding Bay Area, lead 20 years later to the building of an air-tight geodesic dome based on some of Buckminster Fuller’s principles. That journey is at the heart of this fascinating documentary.
