Why has Chasing Ice film won so many awards? Why have international celebrities, politicians and activists stepped out to endorse it and spread the word? Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Redford, Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, Barack Obama. Why because, this is “History in the making” to quote filmmaker, National Geographic photojournalist, James Balog.

Chasing Ice was a TIFF 2012 film. It has won innumerable awards from every film festival it has been shown at. James Balog uses stunning cinematography and takes us to never before seen areas of the Arctic. Chasing Ice documents Balog’s incredible journey to provide us with the indisputable proof that our climate is changing rapidly and permanently. For whatever reasons global warming is a reality whether we can do anything about it or not.

James Balog visited Iceland in 2005 and what he saw there shocked him. The world’s glaciers, huge ice fields that have been here for over 10,000 years were obviously receding at a speed that was suddenly visible. He determined to record this historic geological change in the Earth before it was too late. Balog used his influence as a filmmaker with National Geographic to attract a group of young people who could join him in what would turn out to be a massive undertaking to capture through time-lapse photography using multiple cameras, the melting of the ice sheets. It would take dedication, sacrifice, money, resources and the kind of unflagging determination that only someone like James Balog could summon. The result is one of the most astonishing and visual records of the Artic Ice Sheet as it recedes over a period of several years.

Balog has created this Extreme Ice Survey, a multi-year project that through time-lapse photography documents the dramatic changes to numerous the Artic Ice sheets – the glaciers. Climate change is real and the evidence is here whether we can change it or not and will have profound impacts on our planet. James Balog felt that this was a pivotal time in Earth’s geological history that we must record because once the ice is gone we will never see it again. It is a beautiful and disturbing record.

James Balog’s mission:

To capture images of the receding Artic glaciers (world’s ice fields) that will show indisputably the story of the Earth’s changing climate over a multi-year interval.

See Chasing Ice. It is spectacular. Check out their website and see how you can participate further.

Chasing Ice is a winner at Sundance Film Festival, Hot Docs Documentary Festival, River Run Int’l Film Festival, Silverdocs Documentary Film Festival, SXSW Fillm Festival, Sundance London Film and Music Festival and many more.

-Moira Romano