Genesis 2.0 | |
---|---|
Directed by | Christian Frei |
Written by | Christian Frei |
Produced by | Christian Frei |
Starring | Peter Grigoriev, Semyon Grigoriev, George Church, Spira Sleptsov, Hwang Woo-suk |
Cinematography | Maxim Arbugaev, Peter Indergand |
Edited by | Christian Frei, Thomas Bachmann |
Music by | Max Richter, Edward Artemyev |
Distributed by | Rise and Shine World Sales |
Release date |
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Running time | 112 minutes |
Country | Switzerland |
Languages | English, Russian, Yakut, Korean |
Genesis 2.0 is a documentary film made by Swiss director and producer Christian Frei [2] and Russian filmmaker Maxim Abugaev. The feature-length film was released in January 2018 in the World Cinema Documentary section at the Sundance Film Festival. At the center of the film is the woolly mammoth, an extinct and iconic species that today is surrounded by wishes and visions. On the one hand, the film documents the hazardous daily lives of a group of men who gather valuable mammoth tusks in a remote archipelago, the New Siberian Islands. On the other, it illuminates the potential of genetic research and synthetic biology — the means by which researchers hope to bring the woolly mammoth back to life. [1]
Year after year, the mammoth hunters set out on a dangerous journey to the remote New Siberian Islands in the far north of Siberia. They dig into the earth in search of the tusks of extinct mammoths — precious ivory that they can sell for huge sums of money. Because the permafrost is thawing, entire mammoth carcasses are also coming to light, and scientists are showing great interest in these finds. Cloning researchers and molecular biologists are working with a variety of methods to achieve their goal of bringing the woolly mammoth back to life. The film takes us from the archaic landscape of the New Siberian Islands to a mammoth museum in Yakutsk, a meeting of young scientists in Boston, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, to a commercial cloning company in South Korea, and to gene data bank in Shenzhen, China.
The film's Russian co-director, Maxim Abugaev, accompanied and filmed the Siberian mammoth tusk collectors during one hunting season. "(These) hunters are the native people of the North, who practice shamanism and believe in spirits of nature," [3] says Abugaev. "They are very careful and superstitious in their approach to these uninhabited islands. We see the Arctic as a living creature of its own with mighty incomprehensible powers." [3] "Genesis 2.0 deals with legends, myths and taboos and confronts us with our own fear of an unknown future," [3] adds Frei.
In this situation, researchers such as George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard University [4] see the potential of the science: "Synthetic biology is very likely to be the next big revolution. (...) Humans are very bold and they have vision. And they will follow that sometimes to their death." [5] [6]
Dr. Huanming Yang from the BGI Human Genome Center in Shenzhen [7] sums up the future-oriented research shown in the film as follows: "We proposed the first project to sequence everything in the world. (...) God’s word is still imperfect. But if we work together we can make God perfect. The book of life is written with the same language. All the secrets are in this double helix." [8] In this project, life becomes data.
The professional mammoth hunter Peter Grigoriev and the unemployed stoker Spira Sleptsov share a desire to ultimately discover a spectacular mammoth tusk. Ivory, or "white gold", can be sold in China for high prices [9] — and in order to reach this goal, the hunters are risking a great deal. They are torn between two driving forces: the promise of a great discovery and their spiritual belief that it is forbidden to disturb the mammoths’ remains. [10]
Peter Grigoriev's brother, the paleontologist Semyon Grigoriev, is the director of the mammoth museum in Yakutsk. His goal is to one day be able to create a clone of a woolly mammoth. [11] In order to realize this ambition he travels to South Korea, together with his wife, Lena Grigorieva, to visit the biotech company named Sooam, led by Hwang Woo-suk. In 2005, Hwang made headlines because his stem cell research was deemed as fraud; today he is the director of a successful commercial company that specializes in cloning dogs.
The woolly mammoth is an object of interest not only for cloning researchers but also for molecular biologists and geneticists. One of them is George Church, a Harvard professor of genetics [12] who uses state-of-the-art technological methods for his research in synthetic biology. He is currently working on "editing" an elephant similar to a mammoth [12] — a "mammophant". [13]
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018 and was awarded with the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography. [14] Swiss cameraman Peter Intergand and Russian filmmaker Maxim Arbugaev were responsible for the cinematography; Arbugaev also co-directed the film.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80%, based on 15 reviews, with an average rating of 5.1/10. [15] Similar review aggregator Metacritic calculated a score of 60 based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [16]
In The Hollywood Reporter, Sheri Linden writes that the film is a real-life thriller structured like a double helix, simultaneously frightening and unforgettable: [10] “At the center of the heady mix is the woolly mammoth, a long-extinct species that key figures in the exquisitely crafted documentary are determined to revive. Those figures speak, without irony or warning, of the power to design bodies and perfect God's work.” [10] She continues: “With elegance and poignancy, the score by Max Richter and Edward Artemyev sounds its own alarms, a stirring match for the striking camerawork by a number of cinematographers. And through the divergent paths of two Yakutian brothers, the film throws into question the simplistic notion of mercenary selfishness versus the purity of science.” [10]
Wendy Idy from Screendaily finds the beginning of the film esoteric, as it opens with a female voice intoning a passage from a Yakutian epic tale. [17] In her review, Idy emphasizes the significance of the film's basic message: “The overarching theme is humanity’s reckless courage — as such, it’s a picture which finds its closest parallels in the films of Werner Herzog.” [17]
Awards
Nominations
Christian Frei is a Swiss filmmaker and film producer. He is mostly known for his films War Photographer (2001), The Giant Buddhas (2005) and Space Tourists (2009).
Ondi Doane Timoner is an American filmmaker and the founder and chief executive officer of Interloper Films, a production company located in Pasadena, California.
Shimon Dotan is an Israeli film director, screenwriter, and producer.
The woolly mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with the African Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in East Asia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The Columbian mammoth lived alongside the woolly mammoth in North America, and DNA studies show that the two hybridised with each other.
The Jarkov Mammoth, is a woolly mammoth specimen discovered on the Taymyr Peninsula of Siberia by a nine-year-old boy in 1997. This particular mammoth is estimated to have lived about 20,000 years ago. It is likely to be male and probably died at age 47.
The existence of frozen soft-tissue remains and DNA of woolly mammoths has led to the possibility that the species could be regenerated by scientific means. In 2003 the Pyrenean ibex was briefly revived, giving credence to the idea that the mammoth could be successfully revived. As of today, several methods have been proposed to achieve this goal, including cloning, artificial insemination, and genome editing. Whether it is ethical to create a live mammoth is not universally agreed on.
Space Tourists is a feature-length documentary of the Swiss director Christian Frei. The film had its premiere at the Zurich Film Festival in 2009 and has won the "World Cinema Directing Award" at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010.
Yuka is the best-preserved woolly mammoth carcass ever found. It was discovered by local Siberian tusk hunters in August 2010. They turned it over to local scientists, who made an initial assessment of the carcass in 2012. It is displayed in Moscow.
Tchavdar Georgiev is an Emmy award winning writer, producer, director and editor of fiction and non-fiction films, TV commercials and television programs both in the USA and abroad.
The 2014 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 16, 2014 until January 26, 2014 in Park City, Utah, United States, with screenings in Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance Resort in Utah. The festival opened with Whiplash directed by Damien Chazelle and closed with musical drama Rudderless directed by William H. Macy.
The Green Film Network is an international association of environmental film festivals and was founded to support the work of international documentary filmmakers and promote films that raise awareness of environmental topics.
Candescent Films is an American film production company that produces and finances documentary and narrative films that explore social issues.
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an American documentary filmmaker. She was the director, along with her husband, Jimmy Chin, for the film Free Solo, which won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film profiled Alex Honnold and his free solo climb of El Capitan in June 2017.
Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World is a Canadian documentary film directed by Catherine Bainbridge and co-directed by Alfonso Maiorana, released in 2017. The film profiles the impact of Indigenous musicians in Canada and the US on the development of rock music. Artists profiled include Charley Patton, Mildred Bailey, Link Wray, Jesse Ed Davis, Stevie Salas, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson, Randy Castillo, Jimi Hendrix, Taboo and others. The title of the film is a reference to the pioneering instrumental "Rumble", released in 1958 by the American group Link Wray & His Ray Men. The instrumental piece was very influential on many artists.
The 2018 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 18 to January 28, 2018. The first lineup of competition films was announced on November 29, 2017.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a 2018 American documentary film about the lives of black people in Hale County, Alabama. It is directed by RaMell Ross and produced by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and is Ross's first nonfiction feature. The documentary is the winner of 2018 Sundance Film Festival award for U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Cinema Eye Honors Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. After its theatrical run, it aired on the PBS series Independent Lens and eventually won a 2020 Peabody Award.
Evgenia Arbugaeva is a photographer of the Russian Arctic. Having grown up in Yakutsk, she has an empathy with the people living in the far north and the difficult living conditions they experience, and several of her photographic projects have involved them. The National Geographic has funded her to photograph the people and economic changes on Russia's northern coast.
Anote's Ark is a 2018 Canadian documentary film directed by Matthieu Rytz. Profiling the impact of climate change on the island nation of Kiribati, which will be one of the first nations on earth to entirely disappear underwater in the event of a sustained sea level rise, the film tells the stories of the nation's former president Anote Tong, who intensely lobbied the international community to take action on the threat, and of Sermary Tiare, an I-Kiribati woman who decides to protect her family by emigrating to New Zealand.
Ivete Lucas is a filmmaker, documentarian, producer, editor, and director based in Austin, Texas. Her work includes the documentary short films The Curse and the Jubilee, The Send-Off, Roadside Attraction, The Rabbit Hunt, Skip Day, Happiness is a Journey and the documentary feature film Pahokee.