James Balog, a regular faculty member at the Summit Workshops, continues to draw accolades for his Extreme Ice Survey — documenting the world’s shrinking glaciers.
With remote cameras positioned at major glaciers over the world supplied by Nikon, his project was the subject of a documentary film, “Chasing Ice,” selected and shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Lisa Kennedy’s story in The Denver Post portrayed the moment thus.
Monday night when the house lights cam up in the Library Theater in Park City, the capacity crowd stood and clapped for director Jeff Orlowski. A few minutes later they stood and applauded more vigorously for the dogged protagonist of the movie, James Balog, an ace nature photographer who founded Extreme Ice Survey.
When Orlowski began filming, he thought he was making a portrait of a driven artist with a camera. “Photographer” was the doc’s first title. In its latest and most compelling incarnation, the film provides a portrait of a man obcessed. Because “Chasing Ice” is exactly what Balog had been doing.
For seven years, he and his team have traced and documented the startling retreat of glaciers in Iceland, Greenland and Alaska. The movie is as stunning as it is chilling if offering visual evidence of global warming.