Chera Van Burg receives Accolade’s annual Humanitarian Award
for her documentary, Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction
Written by Wendy Helfenbaum
(Each year the Accolade Competition grants its Humanitarian Award to a filmmaker
for dedicated service to social justice, humanitarian causes or environmental
issues. This year the award goes to Chera Van Burg in recognition of her
documentary, Call of Life, which raises awareness among the public about the
plight of other species. ... Congratulations Chera!)
Award-winning filmmaker Chera Van Burg wears a lot of hats: psychologist,
educator, musician and activist. But each hat seems to fit her ultimate goal: to
compel people to appreciate the world around them, and act now to save it.
Accolade’s annual Humanitarian Award is given to a filmmaker, television
producer or videographer who makes a significant contribution to social change
or a humanitarian effort. As producer of
Call of Life: Facing the Mass
Extinction, winner of this year’s Award for Excellence, Van Burg’s main goal was
to thoughtfully expose the plight of the earth’s species to a wide audience.
The film, which has been referred to as ‘the
Inconvenient Truth of mass
extinction’, took four years to make and its release in the fall of 2009 was
perfectly timed: The United Nations named 2010 the Year of Biodiversity, stating
that one quarter of all mammal species face extinction in 30 years. It’s this
very loss of biodiversity caused by the mass extinction (ME) of hundreds of
species of animals, marine life and plants that will eventually bring about the
collapse of our ecosystems, the life support systems we all depend on in order
to exist.
“In my films, I look at the cultural and psychological issues that are directly
linked to the causes of environmental destruction,” notes Van Burg. “The mass
extinction is what I call the ‘big umbrella’ of all environmental issues; it
links to everything that we’re dealing with, like climate change and global
warming. It’s also entirely human-caused, so we can make changes; we can fix
this.”
The beginning of a big idea
Five years ago,
Call of Life’s executive producer, David Ulansey, approached Van
Burg. “David had seen a film I had made that dealt with environmental problems
that I linked to psychological and cultural problems,” recalls Van Burg. “He was
inspired to get a team together to make a film about the ME. Our goal with this
film has been not only to show the direct causes of the ME, but also the
psychological and cultural underpinnings that have allowed the situation to
develop. Our film tells the story of a crisis not only in nature, but also in
human nature. As one of our interviewees, Norman Myers says, ‘this is the
biggest issue humanity has ever faced’.”
The film emphasizes that we are currently experiencing “the sixth mass
extinction,” a destruction of biodiversity brought on by global warming,
pollution and other factors caused entirely by things we do every day. "The last
one was 65 million years ago when an asteroid is believed to have hit the planet
and caused the dinosaurs to become extinct,” says Van Burg. “The difference is
this one is entirely human caused.”
Experts weigh in
Van Burg admits that most people have never heard about the ME, and
Call of Life
wanted to change that, by featuring thought-provoking interviews with dozens of
leading scientists, environmentalists, historians, and visionary thinkers,
including paleonanthropologist Richard Leakey, author of
The Sixth Extinction,
Norman Myers, renowned Oxford University authority on biodiversity, Stuart Pimm,
distinguished Duke University conservation scientist, and Gretchen Daily, one of
the world’s leading ecologists.
“We chose our scientific experts on the basis of their unquestionable
credentials and knowledge of the field, because if we’re going to be presenting
this information to an audience, we want to stand behind it,” explains Van Burg.
“We also chose people like Ignacio Chapela and Tyrone Hayes that are examples of
scientists who corporations or even their own universities have tried to silence
or attempted to deny them tenure because their research was an indictment of the
harm that these companies were doing to the environment.”
Pretty as a picture
Much of the film’s gorgeous cinematography featuring wildlife in their natural
habitat is high-quality licensed stock footage or visuals purchased from other
photographers and filmmakers. “Our decision to do this was two-fold,” explains
Van Burg. “We wanted to keep our footprint light. I like to call this
ecologically conscious filmmaking; rather than use fuels we would need to fly to
locations and impact fragile areas, we utilized the abundance of really high
quality footage already available. We also needed to use our limited resources
in the best way possible.”
Van Burg’s team raised about $175,000 from grants and donations, and deferred
everyone’s salary to pay for the rest, calling the project a labor of love.
Director Monte Thompson brought high production values to the editing suite,
including the widespread use of motion graphics to help viewers grasp a variety
of complex statistics and theories. “We also used dance sequences that we shot
and created especially to help illustrate difficult psychological or cultural
concepts. We really wanted to bring an artistic element to the film, to give a
poetic sensibility to contrast and complement the ‘talking head’ aspect,” adds
Van Burg.
Original music, composed by Richard Wormstall and Hans Christian helped create a
mesmerizing background for powerful images, including a stunning yet
heartbreaking aerial shot showing the stark depletion of the Rondonia rainforest
in Brazil. “I’ve seen that visual many, many times now and still I always gasp.
A picture really is worth a thousand words,” says Van Burg.
Information overload
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of making
Call of Life was figuring out what
not to include. “The material in the film is just a small portion of all the
information that we gathered over four years. It was incredibly challenging to
put this together in a coherent and cohesive form that would really make sense
to people without completely overwhelming them,” says Van Burg.
It also didn’t hurt to get a little star power behind the project: longtime
environmental activist and respected actor Peter Coyote agreed to be the film’s
narrator. “We had initially asked Peter to do a narration for the ten-minute
preview of the film, which was integral in raising additional funds, and having
Peter as our narrator was very helpful to that. His wonderful voice and his own
commitment to environmental concerns made his narration all the more powerful.”
Shock factor
Van Burg notes that learning about the urgency of the ME really struck her
during the making of the film. “The most shocking thing to me was how short a
period of time we have to make critical decisions in order to stop the
progression of it,” she says. “The experts we spoke to said we have 5-10 years
to turn this around. That has since changed; we now have even less time. Even
the statistics in our film have become bigger in just a few years.”
Van Burg’s team also strived to create awareness of this huge issue through
Species Alliance, a non-profit organization created by the filmmakers for
networking, outreach and educational purposes. “We can’t do anything if we’re
not aware,” explains Van Burg. “We wanted to provide an avenue for people to
group together for support and to take action.”
Accolades all around
Van Burg was deeply grateful to accept the Accolade’s Award for Excellence. “An
award like this is hugely important. It’s an endorsement of the film and as
such, people not only will take notice, but are more likely to take its subject
matter seriously,” she notes. “That’s so important to us, because with that kind
of endorsement and the fact that the film is likely going to get more viewings,
people are going to take action and change the course of humanity.”
Van Burg learned a great deal during the making of
Call of Life, and shares some
advice for filmmakers interested in exploring complex social issues. “In order
to take something like this on, a filmmaker must be really passionate about the
issue and have the stamina to see it through,” she says. “The wonderful thing is
a lot of people do have that passion about issues these days. It’s also
important to have the support of a passionate crew around you, because it takes
a long time. Also, do all the research necessary to support the message of your
film. This is the obligation and responsibility of any filmmaker taking on
important social issues. Finally, a detailed, finely tuned script is as
essential for a documentary or point of view film as it is for a narrative film.
It’s really essential for unfolding the film on these huge issues. No matter
what type of film, it is still a story above all.”
(Wendy Helfenbaum is a Montreal-based writer and television producer.
Visit her
at
http://www.taketwoproductions.ca.)
Contact Information:
Chera Van Burg
Species Alliance
5200 San Pablo Avenue
Emeryville, CA 94608
415-847-0773
Email:
cherav@earthlink.net
Website:
www.speciesalliance.org