The Last Days of Shishmaref (2008)
Shishmaref is a community of about 600 people, located on an island just off the west coast of Alaska. The effects of global warming threaten the very existence of these people- so much that the entire population needs to be relocated off the island within 10 years. They have become the first tangible victims of the worldwide climate changes. The project exists of several components; exhibition, book, film, website, and educational program. In the documentary Jan Louter depicts the impending end of the traditional lifestyle on the island of Shishmaref trough the lives of three Inupiat families. Despite the alarming situation, the film has not become a political manifesto. The Last Days of Shishmaref is a moving film about identity, transience, mortality, and the clash between different eras and cultures.
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The myth that global warming is a myth (perpetuated most often, it seems, by the talking dead heads on "Fox News"- which is to news what professional wrestling is to sports) is refuted easily enough by the facts as presented here. Or one can watch a starving polar bear being trailed by her starving cub over a melting ice floe; or watch a centuries-old iceberg crumble and collapse into the ocean; or ask any one of the scientists whose credentials make THEM experts on the subject... or watch a documentary like this one. "There's a warming in the world," one of the 500 remaining Shishmaref Eskimos notes. "We will become lost..." While oil companies are making record profits (something in the neighborhood of $125 BILLION this past year), gas prices continue to rise and the Environment to deteriorate. It's now a race against Time. Keep your fingers crossed.