Meaningful Movies: Chasing Coral
Recommended
With 2012's gorgeous Chasing Ice, director Jeff Orlowski captured the intense horror of watching our planet's glaciers disappear. Chasing Coral follows suit, trading the Arctic for jewel-blue oceans: Using macro, micro, and time-lapse images of coral reefs as they thrive and die, Orlowski has crafted another visually stunning film about humans' destruction of the planet. From Hawaii to the Bahamas to Australia, Orlowski and his crew (including underwater photographer Richard Vevers and camera technician and "coral nerd" Zackery Rago) convey the jaw-dropping enormity of our ecological crisis alongside the hallucinogenic beauty of the life that—for now, at least—clings to the reefs lucky enough to avoid bleaching. Watching Chasing Coral is a remarkable experience, one that teeters between overwhelming the viewer with the scope of earth's ruin and inspiring them to find ways to help.
by Erik Henriksen