Chasing Time

In the years since Jeff Orlowski-Yang made Chasing Ice in 2012 the phrase “climate change” has largely been replaced by the words “climate crisis”. The world’s awareness of the issue has also risen sharply - helped no doubt by that film, which documented National Geographic photographer James Balog’s attempts to bring home the issue visually through time-lapse photography of glaciers across the world set up as part of his Extreme Ice Survey.

The project essentially became the life’s work of Balog but, as this companion film shows, he isn’t immune to the passage of time either, needing knee and hip surgery before receiving a cancer diagnosis. Orlowski-Yang follows Balog as he brings this chapter of his life to a close by removing the cameras he originally set up, although this is not the end of the story.

Drone shots are used to give a sense of the landscape of Iceland, where the last of Balog’s cameras is situated as he, and his original team, head to it to take it down. They also emphasise the human’s smallness against it, which seems ironic when you consider the impact on it which we exert globally.

Time lapse has always been an effective tool for bringing a sense of immediacy to changes that we can’t perceive with our naked eye. This film, like its longer predecessor, brings home the alarming rate at which this is happening. We can watch a decade unfold in a minute or two as ancient ice, with its beautiful cobalt blue and aquamarine colours retreats as sea levels rise. Elsewhere, huge glaciers are replaced by lakes. Perhaps most starkly sad of all is a monument to a dead glacier erected in Iceland, nudging those who see it to think about what has already been lost.

Beyond the climate change element of the film, Orlowski-Yang also touches on the importance of Balog’s mentorship of others, including the director himself. This sense of passing on a baton is a subsidiary theme of the film, which is co-directed by Sarah Keo, who he has, in turn, mentored.

Balog notes the way that things change for the glacier, speaking about the flow of geological time. By the end of watching this you could well be prompted to note that change in the glaciers has started to sprint, while it’s our response that remains painfully slow.