Attention Caribou: It's Time for Your Closeup
Date: 12-Sep-06
Country: CANADA
Author: Rachelle Younglai
"The White Planet," a documentary about life in the Arctic, was delayed by a year as filmmakers waited for a herd of nearly half a million caribou to gather for their yearly migration up north.
The filmmakers had scheduled "meetings" with polar bears, caribou, whales, seals and walruses around spring and summer, which is considered prime time for filming animals in the north. But nothing is guaranteed.
"It's a waiting game... I mean animals don't read call-sheets," Caroline Underwood, a director who was in the Arctic for the shooting, said on Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the film, originally in French, made its English language debut.
"You try and set it up so that you have the best possible chance, and then when you get there, you hope that the weather is on your side and that the animals do the same thing that they have been doing for 10 years and don't decide to do something vastly different," she said.
The documentary, directed by Thierry Ragobert and Thierry Piantanida takes viewers on a tour of the Arctic that aims to show that there is more beyond the vast plains ice and snow.
It's the second big documentary about surviving cold climates in two years. Last year's Academy Award-winning documentary "March of the Penguins" showed the struggle that emperor penguins in the Antarctic face to live and reproduce.
"The White Planet" follows a polar bear fending for her young and the migratory patterns of caribou and birds. It takes the viewer under the icy waters where the whales come up once a year and to the edges of the ice floes, where the seals congregate.
"Because we had time, the choice was to let animals come to us," said Thierry Ragobert, who worked for a decade with Jacques Cousteau on Cousteau's television series "A la Decouverte du Monde."
"At one particular moment, they forget you, those very rare moments we try to shoot."
Unlike other recent documentaries, the film doesn't explicitly show the effects of global warming.
"It was more emotionally driven than a science documentary," said Ragobert. "To protect them, you have to love them. We tried to bring the knowledge of the animals' lives by creating emotional bonds. We hoped that maybe some of the audience will be in a position to do something."
The documentary cost more than 5 million euros (US$6.3 million) to make and has been picked up by distributors in about 45 countries.
(For more stories related to the Toronto Film Festival, please go to http://today.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage.aspx?type=filmfests&src=cms)
