A portrait of James Lovelock, originator of the theory that the earth…
An Ecology of Hope
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While the environment may be threatened by man, it will also be saved by man. So believes Pierre Dansereau, ecologist, visionary and inveterate optimist. Brimming with an amazing vitality at age 90, the internationally renowned scientist has a wide-ranging knowledge and a passionate commitment to humanity. In retracing the highlights of his long and fruitful life, the film takes us from Baffin Island to New York City, from the Gaspé Peninsula to Brazil. At each stop on this mini world tour, we witness landscapes of breathtaking beauty. All things are interrelated and the harmony of the whole is essential to our very survival.
Citation
Main credits
Dansereau, Fernand (film director)
Payette, Jacques (collaborator)
Michel, Eric (film producer)
Fielden, Hubert (narrator)
Other credits
Cinematography, Philippe Lavalette, Marc Gadoury; sound, Diane Carrière, Catherine Van Der Donckt; editing, Hélène Girard; music, Francine Beaudry; sound editing, Marie-Claude Gagné.
Distributor subjects
Environment and Conservation; Developing Countries; Foreign Countries; Plants; Sciences; Ecologists; Landscape ecologyKeywords
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[music]
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[sil.]
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Here we go gathering nuts in there, nuts
in there, this cold and frosty morning.
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Cold and frostry morning.
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[music]
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[music]
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[non-English narration]
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[music]
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[music]
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Beautiful trees then. I know.
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Witnesses of… It\'s times past.
500 years of…
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At least. Local history. Absolutely.
Well, the slopes a bit steep,
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isn\'t it here? But anyway now
we are path that we can stand.
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And if we talk about the English landscape
and the English landscape movement
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which started I guess in the
middle of the 18th century
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where the English had this
love affair with nature.
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And this is the inspiration
for that remarkable movement.
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This reaction against
France, the French King,
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uh… the concentration of power and it
was this reaction against, you know,
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what William, the Conqueror had forced
on this landscape, geometrical towns,
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gridiron layouts describing
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and formalizing the landscape. And then
again in the time of Louis Quatorze,
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this, these formal garden landscapes of
which we have an example very close to us
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here in Hampton called Hampton Court. Hampton
Court. Uh… But that was all smut largely swept away
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in the 18th century, the
last Avenue was laid out
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in this country in 1740. [music]
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Well, in what seems like
this last will and testament
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the great explorer of the
Sahara Theodore Monod
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published a book entitled, \"Is
The Human Adventure A Failure?\".
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What do you say? I don\'t
think it\'s a failure.
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You don\'t. Because we\'ve had
millions of years of evolution.
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And human society and human
individuals have been subjected
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to enormous environmental changes, and
they\'ve adapted and adjusted to it.
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And surely, that is the hope for the future
that we will actually adapt, and adjust
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to the environmental changes to the pollution
that is happening at the present time.
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I think what we forget in fact is
that there have been extraordinarily
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rapid environmental changes. Yes.
It doesn\'t slow an evolutionary
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that there have been big changes of
temperature, big changes of precipitation,
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big changes of sea level where we\'ve been
isolated on islands or on continents
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over very short periods of time. And we\'ve
adjusted and adapted to those technologically…
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Technologically… Changes…
socially, politically…
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Well, we have a lot to learn. But
surely, the challenge is exciting,
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and that is something which will and
should sustain us in the future.
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[music]
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I\'m an anti-institutional,
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and particularly as educational
institutions have developed uh…
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because they are so
repressive and more and more
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in my teaching career in universities.
I have actually become
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extraordinarily subversive. And I now
find myself saying to my students,
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\"You must always ask questions.
You must now let your friends,
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politicians, get away with it.
You must interrogate them
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and ask them to justify the
statements that they are making.\"
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So I\'m afraid I\'ve become thrivefully
uh… subversive as we say,
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instead of being acquiescent, I\'ve become more and
more subversive. And I think the establishment
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sees me as somebody who
is undermining that.
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[music]
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[music]
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[sil.]
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[music]
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[music]
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[sil.]
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Recycling, Garbage.
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Garbage, then when I finish, when the truck
is full, I go to a recycle place. Then…
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Are you go to the another place. Yeah,
then they separate everything over there.
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[sil.]
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Mechanic does and it takes (inaudible).
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[sil.]
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I\'m gonna tell you a song
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that I loved when I was in school back in my
country in French that\'s do you remember?
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We present you as a French man. All right,
it\'s called, it\'s called (inaudible) village.
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(inaudible). It goes like this.
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Yes, outdoor job, I\'ve
never like the job inside.
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I… I… I could never work
eight hours inside an office
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or a factory or whatever. Over here
with this kind of job I get to know
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different places, I get to know different people,
I get to know, different cultures, I get to know
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different languages everything. The
quality of the streets is better,
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the… the quality of the… the dumps where we dump the
garbage are better. We used to go through the dump to
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umm… to… to… to… to the dump, to the dump.
And now we go recycling places.
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[sil.]
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[music]
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[sil.]
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[non-English narration]
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[sil.]
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[non-English narration]
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[music]
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I think that… We must act in our daily life
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as individuals or as a society
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in order to… to have less destructive
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uh… results upon the
environment, upon society.
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We must not uh… think about the results
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or have any hope about the results of
that action, but just act correctly,
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act uh… locally in our
daily life as a citizen,
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as a uh… consumer, as a taxpayer.
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And we must have no fear about
the future, but also no hope.
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I think, some Eastern
traditions uh… such as
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Buddhism, for example, they have
this kind of approach. Yeah.
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No hope about the future, just they
here and how you work, how do you,
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do you live, you act, and
the future is their future.
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[music]
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[music]
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[non-English narration]
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[music]
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[music]
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[non-English narration]
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[music]
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[non-English narration]
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During Colonial times, this land
was reserved for agriculture.
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[sil.]
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Today, this area is a National Park.
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It was created high up using the
forest of the private estates
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that were the original
preservation mechanism here.
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The biggest problem then for National
Administration was the fact that
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the Park was surrounded by population
of some five million inhabitants.
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Today, we have practically 12 million
people living around this Park.
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[non-English narration]
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Since the inauguration of the National
Park, the difficulty was surveillance
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has been the biggest problem.
In fact, I had to fight
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for at least 10 years until a true
conservation system was put into place.
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[music]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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I\'ve always thought the
difficulty of access
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was the main problem for the people here.
For example, having a simple theater,
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an experimental theater but
one of the certain quality
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not a media (inaudible) one that even if
there isn\'t much money would be good,
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or you could try out new ideas.
Therefore, I thought that I should do
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all that here where I live and where I know lots of
people, good people who have a great deal of talent
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but who have never had any opportunity.
It was then that I had the idea
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to start up a project in Vigidal where
people could have the chance to dream.
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So in \'86, we created the
group called Nosta Model.
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We started a project that was not only concerned
with theater, but which also included
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a philosophy of life. For example,
getting people not to lieder
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to use expressions like excuse me, please, and
thank you, and to think at the collective level
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not just about themselves.
People live in cooperation.
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We believe in sharing. We really
believe in it as an article of faith
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from the bottom of our hearts. This
is the essence of our life here,
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sharing power, sharing with friends, with
our brothers. Here we share everything.
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So when we put on a show
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the monitors do their job. And there are opportunities
for the children or the adults to get involved.
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On the practical level, it is at this
point that an exchange has taken place.
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People who grow up here
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who seek this kind of training, once
they have it, they begin to hand on
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what they have learned to others. It\'s
the multiplication factor at work.
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It\'s a project for life here.
If you believe in the project,
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you\'re in the process of living it. When you live believing
in something, you make sense of your life on Earth.
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The problems never end.
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You climb one mountain successfully,
and another takes its place, and so on
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with a million more mountains, all of which are
a challenge for you. The difference is that
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we are a poor community, even if we are
well informed, even if we are educated,
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even if we do research and other
fields, not just theater.
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The principle goal here is for everyone to
survive with dignity through art if possible,
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not to have 300 people
living on the streets.
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Instability dogs are footsteps, really,
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but we resist, of course, step
by step of the way, we resist.
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We resist the difficulties all the time.
And all the time our dream is threatened.
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I think that in the group, we have a
very important point of reference.
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We are recouping love.
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I think that we must begin by cooking,
by making food, by preparing dishes,
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by learning how to take the time to live,
and learn, and not let life go by being
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anxiously preoccupied with how to earn
money. For me, the group has been marvelous.
01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:19.999
I\'ve met so many people who
believed in the project,
01:08:20.000 --> 01:08:24.999
who were doing what they wanted to do believing in the
transformations that this experience would bring them.
01:08:25.000 --> 01:08:29.999
So I believe in the group. I believe
in the power you have collectively
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when you aren\'t alone. A musician
from the state of Pernambuco
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says that the technology of the people is there will.
Gutti Fraça uses this will to accomplish things.
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I have always lived on hope.
I\'ve worked with
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the plants and the animals. I\'ve worked
with Pierre in Brazil, and in Canada,
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and more and more I find hope in
the people, in the individuals.
01:08:55.000 --> 01:08:59.999
We are encouraged in our belief,
and in our hopes for the future.
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[non-English narration]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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We\'ve got a lot to learn.
We\'ve left a lot behind us
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and there\'s a lot of spiritual
framework, our moral framework has gone.
01:17:30.000 --> 01:17:34.999
And we\'re going to have to build
from the bottom again upwards.
01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:40.000
And perhaps rediscover, the sort
of structures that we\'ve now lost.
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[music]
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[music]
Distributor: National Film Board of Canada
Length: 84 minutes
Date: 2001
Genre: Expository
Language: English; French
Closed Captioning: Available
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