Jeff Orlowski

Last updated
Orlowski-Yang, receiving an Audience Award for Chasing Coral at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Jeff Orlowski (cropped).jpg
Orlowski-Yang, receiving an Audience Award for Chasing Coral at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival

Jeff Orlowski-Yang is an American filmmaker. He is best known for both directing and producing the Emmy Award-winning documentary Chasing Ice (2012) and Chasing Coral (2017) and for directing The Social Dilemma about the damaging societal impact of social media.

Contents

Life and career

Born and raised in Staten Island, New York, Orlowski-Yang attended Stuyvesant High School where he served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Spectator . [1]

At the age of 18, Orlowski-Yang moved to California to study anthropology at Stanford University.[ citation needed ] In his senior year at Stanford, he joined environmental photographer James Balog's Extreme Ice Survey, a time-lapse photography project monitoring glacier retreat around the world. Hired first as the team's videographer, he eventually went on to direct the documentary Chasing Ice based on Balog's work.[ citation needed ]

The feature-length documentary received international acclaim, screening on all seven continents and capturing more than 40 awards from film festivals around the world. Chasing Ice also received a 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Nature Programming; the Sundance Film Festival Excellence in Cinematography Award for U.S. Documentary; an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song "Before My Time;" and a 2016 Doc Impact Award honoring documentary films that have made the greatest impact on society. [2]

In 2009, Orlowski-Yang founded Exposure Labs, a production company geared toward socially relevant filmmaking. In 2015, he produced the film Frame by Frame, which premiered at South by Southwest and tells the story of four Afghan photojournalists working to build a free press following decades of war and an oppressive Taliban regime. [3] [ citation needed ]

In January 2016, Orlowski-Yang received the inaugural Sundance Institute | Discovery Impact Fellowship for environmental filmmaking. [4] [ citation needed ]

In 2017, Orlowski-Yang released Chasing Coral , a feature-length film on the rapid changes occurring to the world's coral reefs. [5] The film won a 2018 Peabody Award. [6]

In 2020, Orlowski-Yang directed The Social Dilemma in collaboration with the Center for Humane Technology about the damaging societal impact of social media.[ citation needed ]

Chasing Ice

Chasing Ice is a 2012 documentary chronicling environmental photographer James Balog's quest to capture images, through the Extreme Ice Survey, a long-term photography project monitoring 24 of the world's glaciers through 43 time-lapse cameras, that will help tell the story of the changes in Earth's climate brought on by global warming. [7]

The documentary includes scenes from a glacier calving event that took place at Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, lasting 75 minutes, the longest such event ever captured on film according to the Guinness Book of World Records. [8]

Huffington Post called the documentary "one of the most beautiful and important films ever made" [9] and Roger Ebert wrote: "At a time when warnings of global warming were being dismissed by broadcast blabbermouths as "junk science," the science here is based on actual observation of the results as they happen. When opponents of the theory of evolution say (incorrectly) that no one has ever seen evolution happening, scientists are seeing climate change happening right now — and with alarming speed. Here is a film for skeptics who say "we don’t have enough information." [10]

Filmography

Awards

Related Research Articles

<i>An Inconvenient Truth</i> 2006 film by Davis Guggenheim

An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming. The film features a slide show that, by Gore's own estimate, he has presented over 1,000 times to audiences worldwide.

Thomas Furneaux Lennon is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1968 and Yale University in 1973.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extreme Ice Survey</span> Global warming survey

The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), based in Boulder, Colorado, uses time-lapse photography, conventional photography and video to document the effects of global warming on glacial ice. It is the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using ground-based, real-time photography. Starting in 2007 the EIS team installed as many as 43 time-lapse cameras at a time at 18 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Canada, the Nepalese Himalaya, and the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. The cameras shoot year-round, during daylight, at various rates. The team supplements the time-lapse record by occasionally repeating shots at fixed locations in Iceland, Bolivia, the Canadian province of British Columbia and the French and Swiss Alps. Collected images are being used for scientific evidence and as part of a global outreach campaign aimed at educating the public about the effects of climate change. EIS imagery has appeared in time-lapse videos displayed in the terminal at Denver International Airport; in media productions such as the 2009 NOVA Extreme Ice documentary on PBS; and is the focus of the feature-length film Chasing Ice, directed by Jeff Orlowski, which premiered at the Sundance film festival in Utah on January 23, 2012. Major findings were published in 2012 in Ice: Portraits of the World’s Vanishing Glaciers by James Balog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eric Daniel Metzgar</span> American film director

Eric Daniel Metzgar is a filmmaker who lives and works in San Francisco.

The Boulder International Film Festival (BIFF), sponsored by the Colorado Film Society, is held annually on Presidents Day Weekend in Boulder, Colorado USA, and has developed a reputation as one of the most compelling young film festivals in the U.S., exhibiting a number of new-but-unknown feature films, documentaries, animations, and shorts that have gone on to significant box-office success and multiple Oscar nominations, including Monsieur Lazhar, Burma VJ, Revanche, Wasp, Miracle Fish, The Conscience of Nhem Eh, Waste Land, Incident in New Baghdad, Instead of Abracadabra, Raju, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, West Bank Story, The Secret of Kells, 5 Broken Cameras, Chasing Ice, Curfew, Asad,The Missing Picture, and The Wind Rises. More than 23,600 filmmakers, national media, special guests and film enthusiasts attended the four-day BIFF 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Balog</span> American photographer

James Balog is an American photographer whose work explores the relationship between humans and nature. He is the founder and director of Earth Vision Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Stone (director)</span> British-American documentary filmmaker

Robert Stone is a British-American documentary filmmaker. His work has been screened at dozens of film festivals and televised around the world, notably seven of his films have appeared on PBS's American Experience series and four of his films have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He is an Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary and a three-time Emmy nominee for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.

Tia Lessin is an American documentary filmmaker. Lessin has produced and directed documentaries and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wayne Chang</span> American businessman/entrepreneur

Wayne Chang is an American entrepreneur, angel investor, film producer, and philanthropist. He is best known for founding Crashlytics, a startup acquired by Twitter in 2013. He is also known for creating a filesharing network called i2hub, making various seed investments, and his lawsuit against the Winklevoss brothers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael P. Nash</span> American film director

Michael P. Nash is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He is the founder of Beverly Hills Productions.

Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is an annual non-fiction film festival held in Missoula, Montana each February. The event showcases documentary films from around the world. The festival first began in 2003 as a seven-day event. It is now a ten-day event. The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is the largest cinema event in Montana. The festival presents an average of 150 non-fiction films annually at the historic Wilma Theater, The Top Hat, The Roxy Theater, and Crystal Theater in downtown Missoula.

<i>Chasing Ice</i> 2012 documentary film directed by Jeff Orlowski

Chasing Ice is a 2012 documentary film about the efforts of nature photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) to publicize the effects of climate change. The film was directed by Jeff Orlowski. It was released in the United States on November 16, 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Brewster</span> American psychiatrist and filmmaker

Joe Brewster is an American psychiatrist and filmmaker who directs and produces fiction films, documentaries and new media focused on the experiences of communities of color.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2017 Sundance Film Festival</span>

The 2017 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 to January 29, 2017. The first lineup of competition films was announced November 30, 2016.

<i>Chasing Coral</i> American documentary film highlighting the loss of coral habitats around the world

Chasing Coral is a 2017 American documentary film about a team of divers, scientists and photographers around the world who document the disappearance of coral reefs. Chasing Coral was produced by Exposure Labs and directed by Jeff Orlowski. It premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was released globally on Netflix as a Netflix Original Documentary in July 2017. Jeff Orlowski has previously directed the movie Chasing Ice in 2012, which shares a similar plot to Chasing Coral.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2020 Sundance Film Festival</span> Film festival

The 2020 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 23 to February 2, 2020. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 4, 2019. The opening night film was Miss Americana directed by Lana Wilson and produced by Morgan Neville, Caitrin Rogers, and Christine O'Malley.

<i>The Social Dilemma</i> 2020 American docudrama film by Jeff Orlowski

The Social Dilemma is a 2020 American docudrama film directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Orlowski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis about the negative social effects of social media.

Davis Coombe is an American documentary film editor, writer, producer and director. He is best known for his work on The Social Dilemma, Casting JonBenet, Chasing Coral and Saving Face. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Klaus Thymann is a Danish explorer, scientist, fellow at The Explorers Club, fellow at the Royal Geographical Society, photographer, filmmaker and creator. He has developed an original viewpoint utilising a cross-disciplinary skillset that combines journalism, image making, mapping, documentary and exploration with a focus on contemporary issues and the climate emergency. Thymann has been featured by BBC, National Geographic, The Guardian, New Scientist and many other distinguished media outlets. He was awarded with the Sony World Photography Award in 2013 and was the youngest winner of the Scandinavian Kodak Gold Award in 1996. He is on the Expert Roster at UNESCO – UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

References

  1. "The Stuyvesant Spectator".
  2. "Chasing Ice | Awards".
  3. "Home". framebyframethefilm.com.
  4. "Jeff Orlowski Named First Sundance Institute | Discovery Impact Fellow – Discovery, Inc".
  5. "Q&A: Catching up with Jeff Orlowski, the Filmmaker Who Made Art Out of Climate Change".
  6. "Chasing Coral".
  7. "The Film".
  8. Records, Guinness World (September 2015). Guinness World Records 2016. ISBN   9781910561065.
  9. "Chasing Ice : A New Documentary Melts a Climate Change Skeptic's Heart". HuffPost . 22 November 2012.
  10. "Chasing Ice movie review & film summary (2012) | Roger Ebert".
  11. "Jeff Orlowski, filmmaker and UN Environment Champion of the Earth". Champions of the Earth. 14 January 2020.