The 14th annual RiverRun International Film Festival will wrap up this weekend. The event gives emerging directors and filmmakers to the opportunity to show off their work and get valuable feedback. Organizers say more than 140 different films from 25 different countries are being shown throughout the 10-day festival.
One film in the category of environmental documentary is getting a lot of attention at the screenings. In Chasing Ice, filmmaker Jeff Orlowski follows National Geographic photographer James Balog as he brings to life the Extreme Ice Survey. EIS is a project that placed 30 cameras across three continents to gather research about the Earth’s melting ice. Orlowki said he hopes the film sparks conversation about climate change.
“You see rivers of ice flowing at an incredibly massive rate and you see them retreating far beyond anything that we expected. There was one glacier in Alaska called the Columbia Glacier, where the camera was installed for the summer. When we went back to visit the camera the glacier was completely out of the frame. It retreated about two and a half miles over the course of three years, and we documented it. It really is the first time you can see what climate change looks like,” said Orlowski.
Orlowki said Chasing Ice will be coming to the big screen this fall. The RiverRun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem will end on Sunday, April 22.