A Forest Year by Samuel Orr. How landscapes change over time

This Saturday Sustainable Diary does not have many words. It leaves pictures to tell the story today. A year long story, which you can see in three minutes. Photographer Samuel Orr for about 2 years in 2006-2008, lived just outside Bloomington, Indiana, at the edge of one of the more wooded regions in the midwest. He was there because at the time he was creating several nature documentaries on the natural history of Indiana for PBS. His house was into the middle of a large nature preserve.

Every day for 15 months, took photos out of the window of his house, then put the accumulated 40,000 photographs into an amazing time-lapse video, A Forest year.

Samuel explain:"Over 40,000 images were taken, and I made little movies of 5-8 seconds for each of the key days/events/seasons, and blended them together into the finished film at 30 frames a second. The audio was added to give another dimension. I tried to put in wildlife songs and calls appropriate to the season. For instance, the honking during what is late winter are Sandhill Cranes, which used a migratory flyway that passed directly overhead".  

At the moment Samuel has a new project, you can see, and help, here...

More info

website Samuel Orr

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Urban Recycling for the Locarno Film Festival

A new way to think architecture in our social and economic crisis times comes from AZPA (Alejandro Zaera-Polo Architecture). The London-Barcelona based practice has been announced as winner of an international competition aimed to establish a recognisable home for the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland. Breaking away from the starchitect notion of public architecture needing to make an “extravagant gesture”, AZPA’s innovative proposal partakes in an act of “urban recycling and sustainability performance” by reusing the pre-existent complex of the Palazzo Scolastico and the Piazza Remo Rossi. Both represents a great opportunity to encrust the Film Festival within an urban structure which has already deep affective relations to the Locarno citizens, and a significant presence in today’s cityscape.

There are two primary aims in AZPA's project:

- Economy of resources through urban recycling. With an estimated price tag of 28 million Swiss Francs, this renovation is said to be no more than the cost of a complete demolition.

- Consolidation and rebranding of the public identity of the "Palazzo del Cinema di Locarno".

As Architect Alejandro Zaera-Polo claims: “I do not want to redraw the city, but keep the city.” Beyond the preservation of the historical memory of Locarno, they believe that the Palazzo Scolastico is an adequate building that deserves to be preserved and recycled. The project aim to transform the building interior courtyard into three larger theaters. Additionally, a complimentary renovation will take place on the surrounding Piazza Remo Rossi, which will be repaved with red natural stone, will become the "Red Carpet Piazza" consolidating the presence of the Film Festival into Locarno’s structure of open spaces.

AZPA declere: “When conceiving our proposal for the Palazzo del Cinema di Locarno, we tried to avoid the dominant trend, prevalent during the last few decades, that public architecture needs to make extravagant gestures in order to curate our cities public realm. In the aftermath of the 2007 global financial crisis, rampant global warming, and perhaps the demise of “starchitecture” as a default procedure to build urban identity, our proposal is guided by principles of economy and the attempt to capitalize on the existing structure and the public affection for the Palazzo Scolastico – which was used to host the local schools and now hosts a variety of NGOs and community associations – to provide an architectural identity for the new cinema complex in Piazza Remo Rossi.”

More info:

www.azpa.com

Locarno International Film Festival

photo credits © AZPA (Alejandro Zaera-Polo Architecture)

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With Promised Land fracking arrives in Hollywood

The begining is 2010, when was realized the documentary Gasland. The movie portrayed the devastating effects of a method of drilling into shale gas formations called hydraulic fracturing colloquially known as "fracking", in rural american communities. It garnered mostly positive reviews from film critics and newspapers but also negative responses by fracking lobbyists. They answer with the production of a movie titled TruthLand, by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, concerned with listing false information propagated in Gasland and showing a different view on fracking.

The new film Promised Land reflected a trend about fracking since the release of Gasland, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Promised Land, released in December 2012, directed by Gus van Sant starring Matt Damon, John Krasinski and Frances McDormand. The screenplay was based on a story by Dave Eggers. It is the first Hollywood treatment of fracking, much to the displeasure of the oil and gas industry which have yet again launched an almost targeted campaign to discredit the movie even before its release, they said: "Promised Land will increase unfounded concerns about fracking."

The film is set to have its international premiere at the 63th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013.

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