Little Art Theatre

AREA PREMIERE & SNEAK PREVIEW!
In Canada, David Suzuki is pretty much an icon: a household name synonymous with nature and science, best known as the host of the long-running CBC TV show "The Nature of Things" and as a pioneering and passionate environmentalist. Although he is a tad less well known here south of the border, he may be the most inspiring, charming, eloquent, compelling voice for environmental sanity in the world today. At the age of 75, he shows no signs of slowing down. By all measures David Suzuki is extraordinary, and you can't help but wish that everyone cared about the earth as much as he does—and that everyone could see Force of Nature because watching this film might make them care as much as he does. But what drove him to become the phenomenon he is? This engrossing documentary guides us through his life and reveals the key events and people that shaped him. The occasion for the film is Suzuki's return to the University of British Columbia to deliver his legacy lecture to a sold-out audience. Director Sturla Gunnarsson interweaves Suzuki's stirring and insightful address with candid interviews to create a captivating portrait of a man whose essential decency speaks volumes about the beauty of the planet he's trying so hard to save.

Documentary. 93 minutes. Directed by Sturla Gunnarsson. 2010

[FILM REVIEW]

FORCE OF NATURE… sounds the alarm.

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~John Keats

"He's a force of nature unto himself. David Suzuki, the famed Canadian award winning scientist, one of the planet's premier geneticists has been rated by his countrymen as one of their greatest citizens. Suzuki, a Japanese gnome, a white maned Yoda of his time, is on the screen in the award winning documentary feature mounted by Canadian director Sturia Gunnarsson.

"The documentary explores, in gorgeous color and sweeping camerawork, the life and times of this brilliant keeper of the flame. Suzuki, at the outset, mounts the stage for the lecture like a tiny Asian Steve Jobs, not there to present a new device, but to glorify the basics of the human species.

"As he stands there in a bright red shirt, rimless glasses and flowing white hair, he is backed by a huge screen that displays, with the occasional aid of Neil Young and Arcadia Fire tracks, not only images of wildlife, the forests and rivers of Canada, but images of his own life, photos and movies of his journey from a happy childhood in Canada. All of it blown apart by World War 2. Along with his mother and father, he was interned by the Canadians in a camp much like America's Manzinar.

"Here, he felt the impact of racism from his own people. Most of his playmates in the camp spoke Japanese. The language wasn't spoke in the Suzuki household, so David, unable to speak his native language was bullied and set apart by his schoolmates. Isolated by his contemporaries, David set out to explore the countryside around the camp. Here, he found a vast swamp where life was growing before his eyes. It became a kind of intellectual playground where he hide, where he could be alone to study the mysteries, and where the incredible cells of his brain began to flourish. Sadly, in the end of the film, he goes back to find that that swamp has become a parking lot.

"Gradually he fell in love with the "force of nature." He grew from suited college student to husband and father of three and then, obsessed with his work, drifted into "hippiedom." At age 33 he became a full professor and and expert on the mysterious world of fruit flies.

"But the world of the lab and the constriction of white lab coats and suffocating cubicles grew tiresome and David blew out into the big wide world of dying nature, climate change, the rotting of our soils, poisoning of our waters. Even today in his late seventies, he tours Canada giving fiery speeches about the disease of CO2 emissions from the world's factories.

"Blended in are wonderful videos and shots of the young David in tinted John Lennon glasses, head band and shaggy beard, having woodland picnics and intense discussions with students and fellow professors.

"As he grew older, David became a broadcaster and documentary maker for the Canadian Broadcasting System. In this film, his beautiful voice and dramatic insights, lift it from just being a dreary lecture and elevate it to a compelling environmental drama.

"Director Gunnarsson and Suzuki take us on a painful nostalgic trip to the land of his ancestors, to Hiroshima, where his own grandparents were sent at the outset of the war. They were dead within two years. Suzuki takes us on a walking montage of current shots juxtaposed with that fatal day. We jerk back and forth between street shots of modern Hiroshima and frightening black and white newsreels of the Enola Gay, the bomber that leveled the city and "evaporated" thousands in the blink of an eye. In an almost tearful passage, Suzuki explains how the dust of the evaporated dead became part of the water and air, the remaining flowers and grass. " They are here still," he says.

"Shortly afterwards, the film takes us on a visit to the flourishing Tokyo fish market where the quickly vanishing rare blue tuna is being sliced up and sold at auction for thousands of dollars. Suzuki makes it clear, that while the fish and the sea it lived in is in danger, the tuna will be served in expensive restaurants around the world.

"Force of Nature" is so much more than a lecture or travelogue to the beauty of our planet. It is compelling and dramatic. It is, at the same time, a paean to what's left of our earth and a fire bell to wake us up. There is a Japanese word: Koan, a Zen riddle or anecdote, but literally means "matter for public thought." "Force of Nature" is such a koan."—JP Devine, Kennebec Journal

Watch the trailer