VIFF: Discoveries in Nature-ville

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead

From Carbon for Water: Thanks to carbon credits, 900,000 homes in the western province of Kenya had free water filters installed.

• New York is not a place that springs to mind when you think about bird watching. All that concrete and human bustle. But smack in the middle of Manhattan you’ll find one of the most famous urban parks in the world and as Birders: the Central Park Effectreveals, it’s a magnet for hundreds of different species of native and migrating birds.

The documentary, showing at VIFF on October 8 and 10, pools the wisdom and musings of some of New York’s keenest ornithologists, from a precocious high school student who rarely leaves home without her binocs, to the frail matriarch who leads bird watching tours through the park. Over a period of a year, we follow the changing complexion of the park and the birdlife therein.

Ironically, the greying of the city means that existing greenspaces are even more densely populated with these feathered visitors. On a spring day, up to a hundred species can apparently be spotted in Central Park. The doc also raises the interesting question of how natural a totally man-made park, where a stream is turned off with a twist of a tap, can be. As one birder puts it, if a herd of buffalo were migrating through New York, he’d go and see that. But they aren’t. This is the last thing keeping people in touch with wilderness.

You’ve probably heard of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in the Pacific gyre. You may also have read recent reports that the North Atlantic gyre is comparable in the scale of plastics pollution. Into the Gyre (October 9, 11) follows a crew of scientists as they heave-ho aboard a tall ship from Bermuda to gather the data that brought about this recent revelation. Watching these meticulous, driven scientists at work brings home the seriousness of a problem that we are only beginning to fathom. Piscivores might want to look away when they open up a fish to reveal a gut-full of plastic bits.

The 44-minute doc is paired with 22-minute Carbon for Water, an encouraging eco-doc that illustrates how putting a price on carbon can reap far-reaching humanitarian and environmental benefits. Thanks to carbon credits, 900,000 homes in the western province of Kenya had free water filters installed over a period of 25 days, reducing the need for women to gather firewood to boil their water. A win-win all round, it would seem.

Annie Eastman’s documentary Bay of All Saints (October 8, 9) does a great job of capturing the struggle over a period of several years of Brazil’s poorest, as they face relocation from their stilted ocean slums or “palafitas” in Bahia. In spite of the shocking piles of floating garbage, rats and rickety dwellings, this sympathetic portrait of three single palafita mothers reveals a spirited and proud community. The choice of the easy-going, refrigerator repairman Norato, a life-long resident of the palafitas, to tell the main story, was inspired.

Also at VIFF, Sharkwater director Rob Stewart returns with a call to save not just the sharks, but the world and humanity itself as he travels across 15 countries in Revolution (October 6,7,10) showing the dire condition of the planet’s ecosystems.

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VIFF runs to October 12 (www.viff.org). Robert Alstead writes at www.2020Vancouver.com.