Chasing Time (2024)

Chasing Time

Since Jeff Orlowski Yang’s Chasing Ice came out in 2012, people have stopped saying “climate change” and started saying “climate crisis.” They’re also more aware of it probably thanks, in part, to that film which recorded National Geographic photographer James Balog’s efforts to demonstrate the problem through time-lapse photography of glaciers around the world set up as part of his Extreme Ice Survey.

For all intents and purposes the project became Balog’s life but he isn’t invincible against time either, needing knee and hip surgery before being diagnosed with cancer. Orlowski Yang follows him as he wraps this chapter up by taking down the cameras he originally installed, although this is not the end.

Drone shots give a sense of Iceland’s terrain where Balog has situated his last camera as he and his original team go to take it down. They also illustrate our smallness against it, which feels ironic when you think about how much we globally affect it.

Time lapse has always been an effective tool for bringing a sense of immediacy to changes we can’t see happening with our naked eye. This film, like its longer predecessor, brings home at what alarming speed that is happening. We can watch a decade unfold in a minute or two as ancient ice with its beautiful cobalt blue and aquamarine colours retreats as sea levels rise; elsewhere huge glaciers are replaced by lakes; perhaps most starkly sad of all is a monument to a dead glacier erected in Iceland which nudges those who see it to think about what has already been lost.

As well as climate change this film also touches briefly on mentorship specifically Balog’s mentorship of others including the director himself. This handing over of a baton is another theme within the documentary, co-directed by Sarah Keo whom he has mentored.

Balog talks about how things change for the glacier speaking about geological time and its flow. By the end of watching this you could be forgiven for noting that the sprint has started in glacier change; it’s our response that remains painfully slow.

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