Not ok – narratives on global warming

narratives on global warming

narratives on global warming

Not ok

2018.12.28.

documentaries

Iceland, a country known for the beauty of its 400+ glaciers, is now losing 11 billion tons of glacial ice each year because of global warming. By 2170 it is predicted that all of Iceland’s glaciers will have disappeared. That future is already with us. In 2014, Icelandic scientists announced that the country’s first major glacier, Okjökull (known to most by its nickname ‘Ok’), had ceased to be. In 2017, U.S. anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer teamed up with Icelandic filmmaker Ragnar Hansson to make a documentary film about what losing their first glacier means to Icelanders. The film, “Not Ok,” features interviews with leading Icelandic politicians, scientists and artists as well as the opinions of regular citizens and the farmers who have been Ok mountain’s neighbors for generations. An added twist: the film is narrated by Ok mountain (voiced by Iceland’s most famous comedian and former Reykjavík mayor, Jón Gnarr) who adds both humor and perspective to the Icelanders’ views on the impact of climate change on their environment. “Not Ok” is not the typical movie about melting glaciers that focuses on the spectacle of collapsing ice sheets. It tries instead to bring the massive and abstract phenomenon of climate change back to a human scale so we can explore the complexity of our emotional response to climate change. It is a little film about a small glacier in an out of the way place that tells a story that impacts every living being on the planet.