Climate Change Films
Stories about our changing world
OBSERVER
An adventure in eight chapters. 🟥 There's a universe everywhere you turn.
Educator ResourcesFeature FilmsNow PlayingHas Lesson PlanClimate ChangeMicrobesScience & SocietyScience Identity
Status: Available for screenings. A global exploration of the centrality of observation to science and the human experience. The film crosses multiple disciplines, as well as oceans and continents, to give audiences insight into the drive to expand knowledge and see our planet and universe from new perspectives.
A Walk in the Woods
What does a redwood forest look like, and sound like, in the wake of a devastating fire?
What does a redwood forest look like, and sound like, in the wake of a devastating fire? Walk through a fire-ravaged redwood forest with experts Beatrix Jiménez, Ian Bornarth, and Alex Jones. Their observations make visible the forces of destruction and regrowth throughout the redwoods ecosystem.
The First Entanglement
Did we domesticate plants or did they domesticate us?
Scientists at a Neolithic dig site explore how the desire for innovation collided with a random mutation in wild wheat thousands of years ago — with consequences that rippled through history in ways early humans could have never imagined.
Corals: On the Brink
Can we save coral reefs from extinction?
Climate change is the biggest threat to coral reefs. Can we use modern genetic tools as one method to help us understand coral biology and perhaps make corals more adaptive to climate change?
Fire Among Giants
What happened after the redwoods burned?
Fire is a force for destruction, but also of rebirth. This lesson is at the heart of Fire Among Giants, an intimate and cinematic look at a world famous redwood forest in the wake of the most destructive inferno on record.
Fire Among Giants: Extended Voices
In-depth interviews with forest experts about the Big Basin State Park after the 2020 wildfire.
The ancient redwoods of California's Big Basin State Park, resilient to fire for centuries, faced an uncertain fate after the 2020 wildfire. These accompanying podcast episodes to our short film, Fire Among Giants, explore the profound impact of the fire through the eyes of three forest experts.
The Future of Forests
Will they survive the threats of climate change?
We introduce the essential services forests provide to humans and the planet, and the many ways in which climate change is threatening the health and productivity of our forests. The researchers in the film present a few solutions that stakeholders are considering to make forests more resilient to these threats, including the use of biotechnology.
Saving The American Chestnut
A case study in genetic engineering
We look to the story of the American Chestnut as an example of how scientists are trying to bring a once-abundant tree back from near extinction through genetic engineering. We also consider the budding genome-editing technology CRISPR Cas-9 as a more precise tool with great promise but also great uncertainty.
