By David Dodge and Scott Rollans
Metamorphosis is an awe-inspring natural phenomenon, in which a creature transforms itself into a startlingly new form—for example, a caterpillar that emerges as a Monarch butterfly. In their poetic, visually lavish new NFB documentary Metamorphosis, filmmakers Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper suggest humanity must undergo a similar transformation if we (and our planet) are to survive the climate change crisis.
Metamorphosis filmmakers Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper. Photo NFB
The film takes viewers on a stark journey through the current effects of climate change, and then emerges to a potential new world of clean energy solutions.
For Ami, inspiration for the film was born out of a personal struggle for hope amidst despair. “About four years ago Typhoon Haiyan just struck the Philippines and over 6,000 people had died. My family is Filipino, and I just couldn’t get it out of my mind.
“And so that led to further conversations, about how humanity is changing as a result of the crisis that we caused,” says Ami.
Ripper (whose colourful stage name dates back to an earlier career as a punk rocker) credits Ami for coming up with the film’s title and central metaphor. “It was actually a series of films at the time—metamorphosis, catharsis and symbiosis. It was going to be a trilogy.”
Their future is our future
Fittingly, their film opens with a Monarch butterfly emerging from its chrysalis—a scene that took two weeks to film.
The new film by Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper is a visual journey from climate crisis to a brave new world. Photo NFB
“Their future is our future,” says Ripper “They are like the canaries in the coal mine—and they’re beautiful canaries in the coal mine. I think that really opens your heart, to think that we could lose something spectacular in all this.”
Butterfyl Reserve in Mexico. Photo NFB/Metamorphosis
“We actually spent time filming in the Monarch Butterfly Reserve in Mexico,” Ripper continues. “That experience was really life-changing for us. I remember being there, just surrounded by millions of butterflies. It’s not every day that you get to experience that, and I felt this really kind of awakening.”
Later, the film weaves together stunning visuals from storm- and wildfire-ravaged locales in Vanuatu and California. There are scenes of a family driving through wildfires, an image strikingly familiar to anyone who witnessed footage of the 2015 Fort McMurray wildfires.
A scene from Metamorphosis, the new film by Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper. Photo NFB/Metamorphosis
From crisis to opportunity
Then the film transitions, and profiles efforts at finding solutions—urban forest towers in Italy, solar of the disadvantaged in California, and underwater art installations that help rebuild coral reefs.
Avi cites those installations, by Jason deCaires Taylor, as a favourite sequence in the film. Taylor creates molds using real people in his community, and then casts them in concrete. “He submerges them underwater and they transform into living coral reefs.”
Ripper has his own candidate. “My favorite scene or solution in the film is Grid Alternatives … a program that provides free solar panels to low-income houses and that also trains people in to become solar installers,” says Ripper.
The scene reminded us of Alberta’s Iron and Earth, who worked with Louis Bull Tribe in Alberta to train First Nations people and oil workers in solar.
Sculptures by Jason deCaires Taylor – creating artificial coral reefs. Photo NFB/Metamorphosis
Seeking hope in a numbing crisis
Despite elements of optimism, Metamorphosis doesn’t minimize the scale of the crisis. Early in the film, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton serves as a de facto narrator: “There is no country that hasn’t been experiencing intense climate events. Hurricanes, floods, droughts. Climate change is the most inclusive, all-enveloping issue of our time. It’s everything. Nothing on the planet is free of it.”
Earthships are self-sustaining homes that attempt to produce their own energy, water and food. Photo NFB/Metamorphosis See our story on Earthships
Lifton is the author of A Call to Awareness: Beyond Psychic Numbing, a paper that encouraged public awareness as a tool to help tackle seemingly hopeless societal problems. Velcrow used Lifton’s writing to help shape his approach to the film. “It’s just overwhelming if we’re constantly being bombarded with how bad things are,” says Ripper. “We need to think about solutions.”
So, as much as Ripper respects films like An Inconvenient Truth, he and Ami were determined to find their own angle. “We tried to create a cinematic, poetic film that would draw people in in a different way,” says Ripper. “Folks sometimes say that we’re trying to make Baraka meets Inconvenient Truth.”
The cinematic results are stirring. In Metamorphosis, Ami and Ripper have crafted a visually stunning, poetic dance between our current crisis and a potential new world of clean energy, built upon a renewed relationship with nature.
“It’s the metaphor for the need for us to completely re-envision our culture and ourselves,” says Ripper. “We see this crisis as an opportunity to actually fix a lot of things that have been broken in the way we live on this planet.”
Catch Metamorphosis on the big screen June 22-24 at Metro Cinema in Edmonton along with a Q&A with filmmakers Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper. See the film page for more dates.