“Really, as a civilization we have no other choice” ~ Jeff Orlowski

Filmmaker, Jeff Orlowski most recently served as director, producer and cinematographer on the Sundance Award-Winning film, Chasing Ice. Orlowski’s feature length documentary was invited to screen at the White House, the United Nations and the United States Congress and has captured over 30 awards from film festivals around the world. It went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song, and has screened on all seven continents.

As founder of exposurelabs, a production company geared toward socially relevant filmmaking, Orlowski, 29, has served as director and producer of short film projects and online/broadcast commercial work. His clients have included Apple, General Motors, Stanford University, Blackboard and the Jane Goodall Institute. His work has aired on the National Geographic Channel, CNN and NBC and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, NPR and Popular Mechanics. He has traveled on tour representing the Sundance Institute, President Obama’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment of the Arts, and he is currently juggling more projects than he knows what to do with. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

> Bonus Interview: Cayte Bosler of elephant journal chats with Jeff Orlowski in 2012 (one month after the documentary was released).

Chasing Ice Official Trailer:

Chasing Ice captures largest glacier calving ever filmed:

In the spring of 2005, National Geographic photographer James Balog headed to the Arctic on a tricky assignment: to capture images to help tell the story of the Earth’s changing climate. Even with a scientific upbringing, Balog had been a skeptic about climate change and a cynic about the nature of academic research. But that first trip north opened his eyes to the biggest story in human history and sparked a challenge within him that would put his career and his very well-being at risk.

Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months of that first trip to Iceland, the photographer conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. With a band of young adventurers in tow (including Jeff Orlowski), Balog began deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers.

As the debate polarizes America and the intensity of natural disasters ramps up globally, Balog finds himself at the end of his tether. Battling untested technology in subzero conditions, he comes face to face with his own mortality. It takes years for Balog to see the fruits of his labor. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Chasing Ice depicts a photographer trying to deliver evidence and hope to our carbon-powered planet.

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Photos: Chasing Ice