Arto's Blog

Recently there was a small movie festival in Helsinki focusing on climate change and environmental problems. The films were good, advertising a bit less successful. Most showings drew only a few dozen spectators despite the very low price of one euro per ticket.

In my opinion the most impressive film was Manufactured Landscapes. It doesn't preach or make naive observations what is right or wrong. It simply shows examples of human activity changing the nature, and landcapes formed by human activity alone. Some of the views are beautiful, others gruesome. Many times the camera starts from a small detail of a high resolution still photo, zooming out to reveal the enormous scale of the scene. I've never seen mass production presented in a more concrete and memorable way than the first few minutes of this film, with a camera sliding along a corridor in a Chinese factory. Highly recommended.

Other films included two Hollywood takes on climate change: An Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour. Of these two, my vote certainly goes to the Inconvenient Truth. It's built around lectures by Al Gore, which sounds like a bad idea at first, but the message comes out in a very clear and convincing way. While not an artistic masterpiece, it might be one of the most important movies of this decade.

The 11th Hour, on the other hand, tries to present so many opinions from various experts that it becomes a heap of scattered pieces of an unsolved puzzle. Of course many of the interviewed people have interesting things to say, which saves the film from being a complete disaster. I especially liked the ideas of Thom Hartmann, Oren Lyons and David Suzuki. However, I couldn't help thinking that a 15 minute film by one of the scientists could have told the story deeper and better than The 11th Hour did in an hour and a half.

Only one of the films in the festival was Finnish. Paratiisi — 3 matkaa tässä maailmassa by Elina Hirvonen was a though-provoking story about immigration. As a nice surprise the director was present for a very interesting Q/A session after the showing.

The photo of this blog entry shows rice fields on the Noto peninsula, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan.

People often ask me how I keep up with the world news while traveling. The short and honest answer is that I don't keep up very well at all. :) Occasionally I do check out a newspaper or some websites, and my folks at home inform me if something really groundbreaking happens, at least if it is related to the area where I'm traveling in. Friends sometimes tell by email what has happened to them lately and it's always nice to read those mails.

For the traveler who likes to keep up to date, India is one of the easier places. Good quality English language newspapers are readily available, sometimes also in restaurants or hotels avoiding the need to buy the paper yourself. I discovered that the editorials and opinions page of the Times of India is particularly interesting. The articles are also available on the web so I'll share two good pieces with you. One of them is about urbanisation and overpopulation while the other takes on the state of science in India:

• City lights
• Delusions on Science

I currently don't have a source of general news which I'd check regularly. Browsing the sites of major newspapers would be too time consuming because I'm not connected to the Internet daily and would have to go back several issues each time to get the full news flow. A weekly summary delivered by email would be optimal, suggestions are welcome. I'm still passionate enough about Free software to read the weekly issues of Linux Weekly News, and for some reason I find it fun to read the Ask the Headhunter newsletters although I'm not currently searching for a job. Otherwise my search for information in the net is usually reduced to current practical needs such as visa information and weather forecasts from the Weather Underground.