Movies for Your Mind
The Last Days of Shishmaref
Anchorage Museum Auditorium
Alaska/Netherlands 2008 documentary, In English/Inupiaq with English subtitles, 90 minutes. MPAA RATING: Not rated. Directed by Jan Louter.
www.shishmaref.nl/shishmaref/shishmaref_release-2.4.4/MainView.html
Review from the AFI Film Festival by Jacqueline Lyanga:
While politicians, scientists and environmentalists debate the effects of global warming, an Inupiaq Eskimo community in northwest Alaska, just under the Arctic Circle, faces the real world consequences of climate change every day. The ice beneath the small Alaskan village of Shishmaref, on the island of Sarichef, is melting. Homes are falling into the ocean. The situation is so severe that it has been predicted that the entire village will disappear within the next 10 years. How can you move an entire way of life? And should these villagers go to the edges of a city, or retain their rural ways? Filmmaker Jan Louter captures the transience of the Inupiaq’s traditional way of life in the face of the collision of climate change, satellite television and mail order shopping. The icy landscape—its water, smoke, steam and sky—is beautifully photographed, as are the village’s inhabitants. Every frame is a poignant portrait. The film doesn’t present a barrage of facts and figures to make its point, instead giving the viewer entry into the issue of climate change by way of a third eye. We feel the loss, the pain and the sadness of the families as they realize that they will never recover a way of life being swallowed by the sea.
