Unfortunately, I managed to see only one documentary film at the recent DocPoint film festival in Helsinki. But this documentary film is definitely worth watching. It's the extraordinary Planet Ocean by Yann-Arthus Bertrand and Michel Pitiot. It examines its subject, the ocean, from several perspectives and in addition to powerful music and beautiful images, it has a very strong message about the importance of protecting our oceans, the source of all life.
The beginning of the film is quite dramatic (see below), the narrator, with her soft voice, declaring that the ocean contains the origins of our own story, us, the mankind. We are descendants of the ocean and yet, we are super predators exploiting the limited resources of our planet and unable to see the elements of catastrophe surrounding us. The planet is ours, but where are we going?
Like the wonderful BBC series Blue Planet, the film shows us the wonders of the ocean and the audience cannot fail to understand that the ocean contains things that are unimaginable on land. The creatures of the deep sea are more mystical than you could ever see on a science-fiction film. We are far behind the imagination of the mother nature. Sea creatures are just fascinatingly weird and we know so little about them.
At the same time, the film makes obvious the connection between the life on land and the sea. The ocean controls our climate and nourishes us, it serves as means to transport goods and has played a role in making globalisation possible. From the early years of our civilisation, the ocean has expanded the minds of human beings and offered us opportunities in work and pleasure.
Yet, we have polluted the sea, destroyed the coral reefs, depleted its resources and still continue to overfish despite all the warning signs clearly visible to us.
After all the amazing and beautiful images of the sea, I couldn't help wiping a few tears from my eyes thinking of seriously endangered sea animals, dead birds' bodies filled with plastic, deep-water oil rigs. Is the only ocean we will know in the future the ocean shown in the pictures below and colourful colar reefs something we remember from "Finding Nemo"?
These photos are from the website of Local Philosophy.
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