Home | |
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Directed by | Yann Arthus-Bertrand |
Written by | Isabelle Delannoy Yann Arthus-Bertrand Denis Carot Yen le Van |
Produced by | Denis Carot Luc Besson |
Narrated by | Glenn Close (English and Dutch) Jacques Gamblin (French) Salma Hayek (Spanish) Mahmood Said (Arabic) Zhou Xun (Mandarin) Aleksandr Gruzdev (Russian) Stephen Chan Chi Wan (Hong Kong) Furkat Usmonov (Uzbek) Zdeněk Svěrák (Czech) |
Cinematography | Michel Benjamin Dominique Gentil |
Edited by | Yen le Van |
Music by | Armand Amar |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Europa Corp., with sponsorship from Kering |
Release date |
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Running time | 90 minutes |
Country | France |
Budget | $12 million |
Home is a 2009 French documentary film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The film is almost entirely composed of aerial shots of various places on Earth. It shows the diversity of life on Earth and how humanity is threatening the ecological balance of the planet. The English version was read by Glenn Close. The Spanish version was read by Salma Hayek. The Arabic version was read by Mahmood Said.
It was released simultaneously on 5 June 2009, in cinemas across the globe, on DVD, Blu-ray, television, and on YouTube, opening in 181 countries. [1] The film was financed by the luxury group Kering. [2] [3] The concept of the documentary was inspired by the director's book Earth from Above . [4] The film had its world festival premiere at the Dawn Breakers International Film Festival in 2012.
Home was filmed in various stages due to the expanse of the areas portrayed. Taking over eighteen months (1.5 years) to complete the film, director Yann Arthus-Bertrand and a camera man, a camera engineer and a pilot flew in a small helicopter through various regions in over fifty countries.
The filming was done using high-definition "Cineflex" cameras which were suspended from a gyro-stabilized sphere from rails on the base of the helicopter. These cameras, originally manufactured for army firing equipment, reduce vibrations helping to capture smooth images, which appear as if they had been filmed from crane arms or dollies. After almost every flight, recordings were immediately checked to ensure they were usable. [5] Raw footage totaled 488 hours.
The documentary was filmed in all of the continents of the world, including Antarctica, covering landscapes in 54 countries, which include:
To promote the documentary online, a YouTube channel known as "HomeProject" was created. Uploaded to this were various short clips of filming which took place in different parts of the world including the Arctic Circle, Africa and the large metropolises featured.
On 9 March 2009, a press-conference was held in Paris, France, where Yann Arthus-Bertrand and various producers talked to the media about the issues raised in the film, as well as confirming that Home would be the first film ever to be simultaneously released in theaters, on television, on DVD and on the Internet in five continents. [6]
On 5 May 2009, a second press-conference was held again in Paris, where the same crew members announced that the film's release date would be 5 June 2009, World Environment Day. Here, they also announced that Home would be 100% free for everyone to view, as "The benefits of this film cannot be counted in dollars, but in audience figures." They also revealed that PPR was going to sponsor the film in order to facilitate unavoidable costs. [7]
The film, which was available for free release until 14 June, has been broadcast in 14 languages. [8] The Blu-ray edition was released by 20th Century Fox and features both the English and French versions. It was expected to sell in excess of 100,000 copies. When production costs are met, all proceeds sale takings will go to the GoodPlanet Foundation. [9] [10]
Yann Arthus-Bertrand said in a TED talk [11] that the movie has no copyright: "This film have[ sic ] no copyright. On the fifth of June, the environmental day, everyone can download the movie on Internet. The film is given for free by the distributor to TV and theater to show it on June 5th." Nevertheless, a copyright notice appears in the final credits.
Several editions of the movie are available for download. Archive.org offer low, medium, and high quality version of the 93-minute movie. They offer both direct downloads and a torrent file.
The film received a large response upon release, receiving over 400,000 combined views within the first 24 hours on YouTube. [12] As of June 2012, the French, English, German, Spanish, Russian and Arabic versions on YouTube logged a total of more than 32 million views. It was shown to high ratings on channels around the world including the international network National Geographic Channel. France 2 débuted the film to over 8.3 million viewers in France alone. [8] In India, Home was shown exclusively via the STAR World cable network. [13]
Generally, the movie was praised for its visuals but received criticism regarding the attitude of the narration and the contradiction between its message and the sponsors' legacy.
Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times criticizes the film's narration and Glenn Close, narrator in the English version, both regarding content and style: "We've heard it all before, if not in the schoolmarmish tones of Glenn Close, whose patronizing narration […] makes the film feel almost as long as the life of its subject." Furthermore, she denounces the film's accusations towards the modern "lifestyle that 'destroys the essential to produce the superfluous'—an accusation that the film's bankrollers, led by the corporation behind luxury brands like Balenciaga and Gucci, are probably familiar with…" [14]
Jean-Michel Frodon, a French movie critic, expressed the opinion that "'Home' had many viewers but didn't have much echo" because Arthus-Bertrand's personality, activities and his innovative no-cost concept have captured more attention than the movie itself. [15]
Jason Buchanan, a film critic for AllMovie Guide , expressed the view that "we are afforded the unique opportunity to witness our changing environment from an entirely new vantage point," and that the film was "produced to inspire action and encourage thoughtful debate." [16]
The Atomic Cafe is a 1982 American documentary film directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty. It is a compilation of clips from newsreels, military training films, and other footage produced in the United States early in the Cold War on the subject of nuclear warfare. Without any narration, the footage is edited and presented in a manner to demonstrate how misinformation and propaganda was used by the U.S. government and popular culture to ease fears about nuclear weapons among the American public.
Man with a Movie Camera is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, and edited by Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova. Kaufman also appears as the eponymous Man of the film.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a French environmentalist, activist, journalist and photographer. He has also directed films about the impact of humans on the planet. He is especially well known for his book Earth from Above (1999) and his films Home (2009) and Human (2015). It is because of this commitment that Yann Arthus-Bertrand was designated Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme on Earth Day.
March of the Penguins is a 2005 French feature-length nature documentary directed and co-written by Luc Jacquet, and co-produced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society. The documentary depicts the yearly journey of the emperor penguins of Antarctica. In autumn, all the penguins of breeding age leave the ocean, which is their normal habitat, to walk inland to their ancestral breeding grounds. There, the penguins participate in a courtship that, if successful, results in the hatching of a chick. For the chick to survive, both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months.
Planet Earth is a 2006 nature documentary television miniseries produced as a co-production between the BBC Natural History Unit, BBC Worldwide, Discovery Channel and NHK, in association with CBC. Five years in the making, Planet Earth was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC and also the first to be filmed in high definition. The series received multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and an award from the Royal Television Society.
François-Henri Pinault is a French businessman, the son of billionaire François Pinault. François-Henri took the reins of his father's retail conglomerate Pinault-Printemps-Redoute in 2005, and turned it into the luxury group Kering in 2013. He has been president of the family-owned investment holding Groupe Artémis since 2003. He has been married to the film producer and actress Salma Hayek since 2009.
Earth is a 2007 nature wildlife documentary film which depicts the diversity of wild habitats and creatures across the planet. The film begins in the Arctic in January of one year and moves southward, concluding in Antarctica in the December of the same year. Along the way, it features the journeys made by three particular species—the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale—to highlight the threats to their survival in the face of rapid environmental change. A companion piece and a sequel to the 2006 BBC/Discovery/NHK/CBC television series Planet Earth, the film uses many of the same sequences, though most are edited differently, and features previously unseen footage not seen on TV.
Disneynature is an independent film studio that specializes in the production of nature documentary films for Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company. The production company was founded on April 21, 2008, and is headquartered in Paris, France.
Frozen Planet is a 2011 British nature documentary series. It was produced as a co-production between the BBC Natural History Unit, Discovery Channel, Antena 3 Television S.A., ZDF, Skai tv and The Open University, in association with Discovery Channel Canada. The production team, which includes executive producer Alastair Fothergill and series producer Vanessa Berlowitz, were previously responsible for the award-winning series The Blue Planet (2001) and Planet Earth (2006), and Frozen Planet is billed as a sequel of sorts. David Attenborough returns as narrator. The series is distributed internationally by BBC Worldwide.
Earth from Above is a United Nations-supported ecological project conceived and led by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The project includes a photo essay-style collection of aerial photography produced by Arthus-Bertrand, in which the photographer captured vistas of Earth from various aircraft during a ten-year period. It gave birth to a book also entitled Earth from Above, of which millions of copies were sold.
Life is a British nature documentary series created and produced as a co-production between the BBC Natural History Unit, Discovery Channel and Skai tv in association with The Open University. It was first broadcast as part of the BBC's Darwin Season on BBC One and BBC HD from October to December 2009 and was written and narrated by David Attenborough. The series takes a global view of the specialised strategies and extreme behaviour that living things have developed in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed "the struggle for existence". Four years in the making, the series was shot entirely in high definition.
Nature's Great Events is a wildlife documentary series made for BBC television, first shown in the UK on BBC One and BBC HD in February 2009. The series looks at how seasonal changes powered by the sun cause shifting weather patterns and ocean currents, which in turn create the conditions for some of the planet's most spectacular wildlife events. Each episode focuses on the challenges and opportunities these changes present to a few key species.
Armand Amar is a French composer, who grew up in Morocco. He won the 2008 César Award for Best Music for Le Concert.
Earthflight is a British nature documentary that shows a flight from the view of the wings of birds across six continents, showing some of the world's greatest natural spectacles from a bird's-eye view. The BBC series was created by John Downer and narrated by David Tennant and consisted of six 60-minute episodes. The first episode aired on BBC One on 29 December 2011.
The GoodPlanet Foundation is a non-governmental organization founded by Yann Arthus-Bertrand in 2005, supporting ecology and sustainable development.
Human is a 2015 documentary by French environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The film is almost entirely composed of exclusive aerial footage and first-person stories told into the camera. It was the first film to premiere in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations, to an audience of 1,000 viewers, including the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Planet Ocean, 2012, is a documentary film co-directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Michael Pitiot. The documentary is about the history of the organisms that live in the ocean, and the relationships they have with each other and with humans. The film's cinematographers are Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who is known for his aerial photography, and Michael Pitiot.
Michael Pitiot is a French screenwriter and film director. He lives and works in France.
Living in the Age of Airplanes is a 2015 American epic documentary film written, directed, and produced by Brian J. Terwilliger. Narrated by Harrison Ford, it explores the way commercial aviation has revolutionized transportation and the many ways it affects everyday lives, and it concludes with a positive endorsement of flying. The film's themes include connections and perspectives, using several cinematographic styles to convey its message.
Algeria from above is a 2015 French-Algerian documentary film directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Yazid Tizi. The film showcases the beauty and diversity of Algeria, the largest country in Africa and the Mediterranean, through stunning aerial shots. The film was narrated by Jalil Lespert, a French actor and director of Algerian origin, who addresses his brother who stayed in Algeria and tells him about the country's history, culture, and natural wonders.