Tucaneira: Wooden Hands

A town without flies

June 1950 •Japanese

A teaching film for social studies, which was developed as a new educational subject in 1947. At an elementary school in Hokkaido, children have started a fly extermination campaign to improve school hygiene. In order to eliminate the causes of flies, the entire town is working to improve the sanitary environment. The short was filmed with the cooperation of Mizukaido Elementary School in Joso City and is the first film in the "Social Studies Teaching Film System" by Iwanami Film Productions.

Seeds of Change

July 2023 •English

An organic farmer in Maine sets out to transform the prison food system. Seeds of Change captures the intersecting stories of life-long farmer Mark McBrine and several incarcerated men as they harvest their own meals from a five-acre prison garden unlike any other.

Atlantis

August 1991 •French

Atmospheric soundtrack follows this compilation of nature footage that focuses on the ocean and various life forms that live, mate and die in it.

Return

May 2018 •Spanish

Koyaanisqatsi

April 1983 •English

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

The Year Earth Changed

April 2021 •English

Never-before-seen footage shows how our living in lockdown opened the door for nature to bounce back and thrive. Across the seas, skies, and lands, Earth found its rhythm when we came to a stop.

Out of Plain Sight

February 2025 •English

From Pulitzer Prize-finalist Rosanna Xia and Academy Award®-winning L.A. Times Studios, OUT OF PLAIN SIGHT is a cinematic exposé of an environmental disaster lurking just off the coast of Southern California. Not far from Catalina Island, aboard one of the most-advanced research ships in the world, David Valentine discovered a corroded barrel on the seafloor that gave him chills. The full environmental horror sharpens into greater clarity once he calls Los Angeles Times journalist Rosanna Xia, who pieces together a shocking revelation: In the years after World War II, as many as half a million barrels of toxic waste had been quietly dumped into the ocean – and the consequences continue to haunt the world today.

Cartas de Arapuca

July 2023 •Portuguese

Birds of America

May 2022 •French

In the first half of the 19th century, the French ornithologist Jean-Jacques Audubon travelled to America to depict birdlife along the Mississippi River. Audubon was also a gifted painter. His life’s work in the form of the classic book ‘Birds of America’ is an invaluable documentation of both extinct species and an entire world of imagination. During the same period, early industrialisation and the expulsion of indigenous peoples was in full swing. The gorgeous film traces Audubon’s path around the South today. The displaced people’s descendants welcome us and retell history, while the deserted vistas of heavy industry stretch across the horizon. The magnificent, broad images in Jacques Loeuille’s atmospheric, modern adventure reminds us at the same time how little - and yet how much - is left of the nature that Audubon travelled around in. His paintings of the colourful birdlife of the South still belong to the most beautiful things you can imagine.

Pueblos de Arrecife

November 2024 •Spanish

Hidden Eden

March 2021 •English

Exploring the concept of the Ecology of Emotions, this musical film portrays an inner journey through the secret garden of creativity put into frame by the nature of Iceland. Hidden Eden is a metaphor for our inner secret garden of creativity. This project bloomed during an art residency in Iceland, sparked by conversations around our shared philosophies on voice and emotional connection. The nature of Iceland inspired us to make the connection on how the landscape reflects the emotional states of creativity and how it helps manage the homeostasis of our inner emotional landscapes. This exchange between emotion and the landscape opens a space for healing. Creativity provides us with the tools to access a garden of our authentic being, nourishing and balancing us. Allowing ourselves to explore the spectrum of our emotions through the lens of our relationship with the Earth invites others to do the same. The creative process can affect our well being and is a key to human evolution.

Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet

June 2021 •English

David Attenborough and scientist Johan Rockström examine Earth's biodiversity collapse and how this crisis can still be averted.

The Private Life of Plants

January 1995 •English

David Attenborough takes us on a guided tour through the secret world of plants, to see things no unaided eye could witness. Each episode in this six-part series focuses on one of the critical stages through which every plant must pass if it is to survive:- travelling, growing, and flowering; struggling with one another; creating alliances with other organisms both plant and animal; and evolving complex ways of surviving in the earth's most ferociously hostile environments.

Bigger Than Us

September 2021 •English

For six years, Melati, 18, has been fighting the plastic pollution that is ravaging her country, Indonesia. Like her, a generation is rising up to fix the world. Everywhere, teenagers and young adults are fighting for human rights, the climate, freedom of expression, social justice, access to education or food. Dignity. Alone against all odds, sometimes risking their lives and safety, they protect, denounce and care for others. The earth. And they change everything. Melati goes to meet them across the globe. At a time when everything seems to be or has been falling apart, these young people show us how to live. And what it means to be in the world today.

Animal

December 2021 •French

16-year-old Bella and Vipulan are part of a generation convinced its very future is in danger. Between climate change and the 6th mass extinction of wildlife, their world could well be inhabitable 50 years from now. They have sounded the alarm over and over, but nothing has really changed. So they’ve decided to tackle the root of the problem: our relationship with the living world. Over the course of an extraordinary journey, they come to realize just how deeply humans are tied to all other living species. And that by saving them… we’re also saving ourselves. Humans thought they could distance themselves from nature, but humans are part and parcel of nature. For man is, after all, an Animal.

Arcadia

October 2017 •English

A provocative and poetic exploration of how the British people have seen their own land through more than a century of cinema. A hallucinated journey of immense beauty and brutality. A kaleidoscopic essay on how magic and madness have linked human beings to nature since the beginning of time.

The Forest

December 2024 •English

The story of a brilliant ecologist with a plan to save the world by restoring the planet's forests. His original work was hijacked by corporations and politicians with disastrous effect. Now he's using science to fight back.

Mush Luv

Invalid date •English

Tony and Ajani, two mushroom foragers based in Minneapolis, spend the day foraging at a local park and musing on the power of nature.

Under The Shoreline

Invalid date •English

With rising sea levels, land reclamation runs rampant in Singapore. Labrador Park is one such waterfront facing this change, and both the ecosystem and frequent fishermen have often been overlooked. This documentary seeks to explore the park's development from a scientific, economic and sociological perspective, produced in collaboration with SOTA and NUS.

The Unforeseen

January 2007 •English

A documentary about the development around Barton Springs in Austin, Texas, and nature's unexpected response to being threatened by human interference.