Earth

Geyrhalter made, among others, “Our Daily Bread,” an equally arresting visual essay on industrial food production. We need filmmakers such as this one very badly these days. We need to know what we’re up to as a species, in the name of comfort, convenience, attractive home furnishings and hazardous disregard for the global house we live in.

Approaching the world in his own specific visual way, Geyrhalter also gravitates toward exploring big ideas, and here he takes on one of the biggest, an exploration of, as he puts it, “the wounds we are inflicting on the Earth.”

What holds Earth back from greatness is that, like the human erosion of the planet's surface, it too ends up being a little wearing.

Though we leave Earth feeling overwhelmed, we’re also more aware than ever that he’s only shown us the tiniest fraction of our impact.

With Earth, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s visual strategy is to wow us with tangibility and data, though he doesn’t give up aesthetic experimentation altogether in this survey of Anthropocene calamities.