Acqua Alta in Venice, An image from “Beautiful Islands,” Horizon Features

A recent surge in apocalyptic films indicates the mood of the zeitgeist. With 2012 fast approaching, our oceans at peril, and the gloom of global warming, the average recession-hit consumer cannot see past their shrinking funds to worry about other mammals going extinct.

The hottest Pakistani summers on record followed by uncharacteristic floods seems to all underscore the creeping panic, while for those on the other side of the debate, the future’s so bright, they’re just happy to wear shades.

Lucy Walker’s film Countdown to Zero, on the likely threat of a nuclear holocaust, is the latest venture by Lawrence Bender of An Inconvenient Truth, in which Walker asserts that, “steps needed to be taken to blow up New York City not only could happen but had already happened.”

Another documentary, Beautiful Islands, by Japanese director Kana Tomoko, examines three sinking islands with widely different cultures, Tuvalu in the South Pacific, Shishmaref in Alaska and Venice, Italy. In her attempt to show the plight of the indigenous people of Tuvalu, the first nation reportedly scheduled to be under water by 2050, her camera becomes infatuated by the sun, sea and the island’s blissful inhabitants – painting such an idyllic picture that one almost feels a pang of schadenfreude at their imminent demise.

An image from “Beautiful Islands" Horizon Features

On the other side of the planet on another tiny island, Alaskan locals have had to relocate, because of thinning ice, a danger to indigenous huntsmen who slaughter seals with their prized polished rifles, and who we sympathize with as much as their gun-toting deer-hunting brethren on the mainland who must cope with supermarket venison off-season. As for the third setting, the film shows Venetians during the Acqua Alta – the annual deluge is a dramatic and expensive nuisance.

Despite the director’s overindulgence of her subjects, the film underscores an urgent call to action, and is one amongst many portending universal peril. Recent box office successes indicate the general public’s fascination with impending doom and post-apocalyptic films: The 11th Hour, Children of Men, 2012, 28 Days Later, and apocalypse movie sites like these sustaining the hysteria.

Here the British artist, Richard Hardy creates a dystopian vision of London, where nature reclaims the urban landscape.

THE ECO-COMMUNE from Richard Hardy on Vimeo.

A scene from Lucy Walker's Countdown to Zero. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

At Sundance this year, director Lucy Walker was one of few filmmakers present with two feature films being screened. The first was Waste Land, a collaboration with the artist Vik Muniz on a recycling project with the inhabitants of the world’s largest garbage dump ‘Jardim Gramacho’, just outside Rio. The film is an inspiring depiction of trash-pickers who recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage and through the process, begin to re-imagine their lives.

Her second film though, Countdown to Zero, is very different but just as powerful and enlightening, on the subject of a global nuclear arms crisis. The film was produced by Lawrence Bender (An Inconvenient Truth), and Walker was given the go ahead to create a film without any particular mandate.  At the film’s screening in Sundance she said that while researching the project and speaking to experts on the actual realities of nuclear proliferation, she was shaken out of her own complacency and forced to reeducate herself.

Director Lucy Walker, photo by Hugo Tillmans

In an interview in Filmmaker magazine, Walker says, “…You know it’s possible, but you don’t think those possibilities could add up to an actuality, and unfortunately every single person I spoke to said, no, it’s real. I looked for reassurance, I really looked for a solution [to the problem] that a nuclear catastrophe is a matter of when, not if. I didn’t want to have to draw that conclusion. Yet nobody could give me a sensible counterargument. And nobody could tell me that the steps needed to be taken to blow up New York City not only could happen but had already happened. That was really shocking to me. You want to think nuclear weapons secrets aren’t smugglable, you want to think uranium isn’t enrichable very easily. You want to think no stuff actually gets loose. Who would have thought kitty litter was more radioactively detectable than fissile material? Isn’t that insane?”

View Down onto Irma's Portrait on the Floor- Photo Vik Muniz, courstesy of Vik Muniz studio

Both of director Lucy Walker’s films will be showing in New York City in the coming weeks.

For further details:
Countdown to Zero: http://www.takepart.com/zero
Wasteland: Docuweeks Screenings @ IFC Centre NYC. USA. August 13th – August 19th

By Kiša Lala