ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON - Icelandic Writer & Documentary Filmmaker - On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Not Ok

ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON - Icelandic Writer & Documentary Filmmaker - On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Not Ok

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Icelandic Writer & Documentary Filmmaker
On Time and Water · The Casket of Time · LoveStar · Not Ok · The Story of the Blue Planet

A letter to the future
Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.
In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.
This monument is to acknowledge that we know
what is happening and what needs to be done.
Only you know if we did it.

If you look at the Himalayas, the frozen glaciers are feeding 1 billion people with milky white water. The real tragedy is if the Himalayan glaciers go the same way as Iceland. In many places in the world, glaciers are very important for agriculture and the basic water supply of people.

RACHEL ASHEGBOFEH IKEMEH - Whitley Award-winning Conservationist - Founder/Director, Southwest Niger Delta Forest Project

RACHEL ASHEGBOFEH IKEMEH - Whitley Award-winning Conservationist - Founder/Director, Southwest Niger Delta Forest Project

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Whitley Award-winning Conservationist
Founder/Director of the Southwest Niger Delta Forest Project

There's no question, we are in a state of conservation emergency. And we have a real situation on our hands and it's so fragile that if we take a step back, we could say goodbye to two types of chimpanzee species and the forest is also on the brink of disappearing forever. And when I started as a conservation researcher, there was kidnapping and insecurity throughout the Nile Delta region, and it was immersed in a lot of oil politics and civil conflicts. Kidnapping and insecurity ran throughout that region. Let's not forget that Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation now. We are over 200 million people in the country, and it's a growing population of young people who are looking for means of livelihood and on the lookout to find space to live. So parts of the forest within one year would suddenly become a new village.

MADELEINE WATTS - Author of The Inland Sea - Creative Writing Professor, Columbia University

MADELEINE WATTS - Author of The Inland Sea - Creative Writing Professor, Columbia University

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Author of The Inland Sea
Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia University

I was reading ecological history and also reading about violence against women and how violence perpetuates itself over many generations. And there was something about this European sort of supremacy of ideas about nature, their ideas about rationality, all of this stuff that sort of came from the Enlightenment. John Oxley's diaries made no mention of the Indigenous Australians who were at the time subject to genocide. So I was interested in these ideas about how they tried to tame the land, which is often talked about as "a woman" and the way that the kind of violence that comes from a particular kind of European colonial project that is enacted on the land intertwines with the way that violence is enacted upon women. And it was something that I felt growing up in Australia.

ANIL SETH - Author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness - Co-director of Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science

ANIL SETH - Author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness - Co-director of Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science

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Author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
Co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science · Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind & Consciousness

This is a point in philosophy that the world as it is can never be directly apprehended by our minds. We are shielded from it by what's called a sensory veil. There are, for instance, no such thing as colors that are out there. As the artist Cezanne said, "The colors are where the brain and the universe meet." And color is, I think, a really good example because it is, in a sense, less than what's there because our eyes are only sensitive to three wavelengths of this huge electromagnetic spectrum, which goes all the way from x-rays and gamma rays to radio waves. And we live in a tiny, thin slice of that reality. But then out of those three wavelengths we experience our brains generate many more than three colors and almost an infinite palette of colors. So there's no sense in which our perception could ever reveal the world as it really is, that it reveals the world in a way that's very useful for us as organisms hell-bent on continuing to live and to survive. 

DAVID J. LINDEN - Author of “Unique:The New Science of Human Individuality” “The Accidental Mind” “The Compass of Pleasure” “Touch”

DAVID J. LINDEN - Author of “Unique:The New Science of Human Individuality” “The Accidental Mind” “The Compass of Pleasure” “Touch”

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Author of Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality · The Accidental Mind · The Compass of Pleasure · Touch
Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University

It's a fundamental human question, how do we become individuals? It's a basic thing about being alive and thinking. Nature versus nurture is a phrase that was popularized by Francis Galton in the late 19th century. and the idea behind it is that if you were to look at a particular trait, say, shyness or height, you could say, well, to what degree can we attribute height to nature? In this case, meaning the gene variants that you inherit from your parents versus nurture in this case, meaning how you were raised by your parents and by your community. And I have many problems with this expression. Part of it is that the nature part shouldn't just mean genetics. In other words, there's all kinds of biological things that are not genetic things. If your mother fought off a viral infection while you were developing in utero, then you have a much higher chance of developing schizophrenia or autism when you grow up. Now that's biological, but it's not hereditary. That's not something that you would then acquire and then pass on to your own children. It only happens in the one generation. The other problem is when we hear the word nurture, we really focus on the family, how your parents raised you or failed to raise you, how your community was involved. And those things are very important, but they're far from everything that impinges upon you in your life. I take experience as the thing to substitute for nurture because it is much more inclusive and it includes not just social experience from your family and your peers and your community, but also experience in the more general sense.

We All Live on One Planet We Call Home - Part 4 - Environmentalists, Economists, Policymakers & Architects Share their Stories

We All Live on One Planet We Call Home - Part 4 - Environmentalists, Economists, Policymakers & Architects Share their Stories

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Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet

Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.

What Kind of World Are We Leaving for Future Generations? - Part 3 - Activists, Environmentalists & Teachers Share their Stories

What Kind of World Are We Leaving for Future Generations? - Part 3 - Activists, Environmentalists & Teachers Share their Stories

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Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet

Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.

JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY - Academy Award-winning Writer/Director - Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams - Moonstruck

JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY - Academy Award-winning Writer/Director - Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams - Moonstruck

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Academy Award · Tony · Pulitzer Prize-winning Writer/Director
Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams
Moonstruck · Wild Mountain Thyme · Danny and the Deep Blue Sea · Joe Versus the Volcano

I knew Philip Seymour Hoffman for several years. We went on vacation together. He produced a play of mine. Before we did Doubt, we worked in the same theater company together, and he was, you know, very committed to excellence. And so he could become impatient with anybody who was not committed to excellence, and that could make him a volatile person to deal with. Phil cared. He cared a great deal. And he worked really hard. They're very committed. Like with Viola Davis. Viola had done a decent amount of big work before Doubt, but she was not recognized yet. And she was careful. You know, she certainly wasn't throwing weight around. She was, I'm the new kid on the block, and I'm just here to work and be serious and do my job, keep my head down, and get out. And pretty much that's what I was doing too, you know, because I've got Meryl Streep, I've got Philip Hoffman, who I was friends with, but Phil's not an easy guy to be friends with or was not easy to be friends with. He's a very prickly person prone to getting pissed off about things that you might not expect. And then Amy Adams was somebody who, you know, tried to get along with everybody and Phil would say like, 'You just want everybody to like you.' So, you know, you're in the middle of that group, and you just, you don't want to put yourself in a position where you're trying to prove something. You have to let them...they're very, very smart people, and they're going to figure out whatever it is that you're doing. They're going to figure out whether you are in any way trying to handle that. And that's not going to go well. And so I didn't do that.

Earth Month Stories - Part 2 - Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers Speak Out & Share How We Can Save the Planet

Earth Month Stories - Part 2 - Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers Speak Out & Share How We Can Save the Planet

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Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet

Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.

DEBORA CAHN - Showrunner & Executive Producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat starring Keri Russell & Rufus Sewell


DEBORA CAHN - Showrunner & Executive Producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat starring Keri Russell & Rufus Sewell


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Showrunner & Executive Producer of Netflix’s The Diplomat starring Keri Russell & Rufus Sewell
Exec. Producer Homeland · Grey’s Anatomy · Vinyl
Co-Producer The West Wing

So the idea was to look at what it's like to be an ambassador for the United States abroad and to do that in the context of a married couple, both of whom are in the same field. And what kind of tensions come from being in a relationship with somebody where you're both collaborators and personal partners and sometimes competitors? And what does that do to your life? What does it do to your work experience? And it felt like a military alliance and a marriage are not so different in many ways. You know, you get together under certain circumstances, and then time marches on and things change, and both parties change, and you're still in this relationship that either can or can't bend with you.

Special Earth Day Stories - Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet - Part 1

Special Earth Day Stories - Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet - Part 1

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Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet

Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.

MAX RICHTER - Award-winning Composer & Pianist

MAX RICHTER - Award-winning Composer & Pianist

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Award-winning Composer & Pianist
His album Sleep is the most streamed classical album of all time
Film & TV scores for Ad Astra · Black Mirror · Shutter Island · The Leftovers · Arrival · Taboo

For me, the creative process is a sort of a continuous thing in the sense that I'm writing kind of all the time, at some level. And that doesn't mean I'm sitting at my desk all the time, but it does mean that I've got a continuous thought process, a continuous engagement with the material I'm trying to shape. And it's many different kinds of processes. First of all, obviously an intention. You need to have an intention. What is it I'm trying to do? But then you get a process of making things, and then you get into a process of dialogue with the things you've made where they start to take on properties and it feels like the material has intentions of its own.

So then you are trying to - it's like herding cats, you know? - sort of corralling this material into some kind of structure, some kind of formed object. Then it becomes like a sculptural process on the large scale.

LOVE - What is love? Filmmakers, poets, aviators, musicians, cave divers, environmentalists, writers, and artists explore what love means to them

LOVE - What is love? Filmmakers, poets, aviators, musicians, cave divers, environmentalists, writers, and artists explore what love means to them

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Filmmakers, poets, aviators, musicians, cave divers, environmentalists, writers, and artists explore what love means to them

HENRY SHUE - Author of “The Pivotal Generation” - Snr. Research Fellow, Centre for International Studies, Oxford

HENRY SHUE - Author of “The Pivotal Generation” - Snr. Research Fellow, Centre for International Studies, Oxford

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Author of The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now · Basic Rights
Senior Research Fellow · Centre for International Studies · University of Oxford

We can tell from the science that we have to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050. And common sense tells you that bringing them down for the second 50% is going to be harder than the first 50%. So we have to take care of the first 50% by about 2030, and it's 2023 already. We literally must - if we're going to keep climate change from becoming even more dangerous than it is - is to do a very great deal in the next seven or eight years. And a huge amount between now and 2050. So it's not that this problem is the most important of all possible problems. There are other problems like preventing nuclear war, but this is a problem that either we get a grip on it now, or there's a real possibility that it will escape from our control. 

CHRISTOPHER J. GERVAIS - Founder/CEO of Wildlife Conservation Film Festival - Cannes Lions Award-winning Producer

CHRISTOPHER J. GERVAIS - Founder/CEO of Wildlife Conservation Film Festival - Cannes Lions Award-winning Producer

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Founder & CEO of Wildlife Conservation Film Festival
Cannes Lions Award-winning Producer

I've been fortunate over the last 13 years to meet some of the world's leading conservationists. Dr. Sylvia Earl, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, his Royal Highness Prince Khaled bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, who came to the film festival in 2014, where we showed some films from his foundation. And there have been a number of others, award-winning filmmakers, and a number of celebrities that have come to the film festival, Academy Award Winner James Cromwell. We've had other celebrities, from Paul Giamatti to Alec Baldwin to Sigourney Weaver, all of whom may have a passion for, if not saving wildlife, then for the environment. And I have found them very humble, very easy to speak to, and I'm immensely grateful that they took the time to come to WCFF from their busy schedule. And we hope to build more relationships.

MICHAEL BEGLER - Showrunner of PERRY MASON starring Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Shea Whigham, Hope Davis

MICHAEL BEGLER - Showrunner of PERRY MASON starring Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Shea Whigham, Hope Davis

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Showrunner · Writer & Executive Producer
Perry Mason starring Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Shea Whigham, Hope Davis
The Knick starring Clive Owen · directed by Steven Soderbergh

Storytelling is our oldest art form. We can't silence the arts and those voices because if we do, we lose something that is so crucial to who we are just as human beings. We want to tell stories. We want to express things. For example, I cannot draw. And one day the teacher wanted us to do negative space drawings. And I said, "What is that?" And they explained that it's looking at what's around the object and not the object. And it clicked, and it made me look at things from a whole different perspective. And you know, what? That became where I was most successful. And so for me, there's are an infinite number of ways to tell a story that you never run out of ideas, that you can always find another road, another way to look at something. That's probably one of the key elements to my career.

PIA MANCINI - Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation - YGL World Economic Forum

PIA MANCINI - Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation - YGL World Economic Forum

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Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation
Alum of YC & Young Global Leaders at World Economic Forum

And so I think many of those challenges have to do with the nature of power and how power is conservative and power will do anything in order to stay in power. And the status quo will do anything and make itself look like anything that you want in order to stay in power. And they might change their spots a little bit here or there, but if you look deep enough, it's the same people. It's the same power.

And so for me, that was the big challenge of realizing that we were facing power and power is conservative, and that's not the way to really achieve the change that we wanted to make. I wasn't patient enough for incremental changes. That's not what I'm interested in. So there's one set of challenges that I think is common to anyone in my position trying to do this. With regards to being a young woman, I mean, sure you face the same kind of sexist comments that you would face anywhere else that I face now as a woman CEO. The best thing I can do for that is just occupying the space and keep occupying the space and refusing to move away or let things like that stop me from engaging.

CHAYSE IRVIN - Cinematographer of “Blonde” starring Ana de Armas, “Beyonce: Lemonade”, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, Kahlil Joseph, The Weekend, Netflix, Charlotte Rampling

CHAYSE IRVIN - Cinematographer of “Blonde” starring Ana de Armas, “Beyonce: Lemonade”, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, Kahlil Joseph, The Weekend, Netflix, Charlotte Rampling

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Award-winning Cinematographer
Blonde starring Ana de Armas · Beyonce: Lemonade · Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman

That's all I can do on a movie. I can't really make a movie good or not because that's decided by the spectator. That's not in my control. All I can do is give it everything that I have. Like that's just the love I have to give. So why bring in all these other things? Just set it up so you can give it everything that you've got each time. In those theoretical considerations about how a scene can function or be rendered or shot or executed or all these things, just think of it as, "Oh, this is the challenge." I want authenticity. How do we create an environment where that's more likely to happen? Because it's never going to be something that I can enforce, and the more I try to enforce it, the less likely it'll happen. For me, the more risky things, the more things that defied expectations are really important to me. I guess it even goes down to just novelty. How do you create a need or a yearning? And the spectator, you create a particular rhythm and then you change that rhythm, and then it's almost like you try to sensitize your spectator to these ideas by defining a particular rhythm that you've set for them.

MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO - Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize - Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept.

MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO - Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize - Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept.

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Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize
Fmr. Executive Director of Venice Biennale (Dept. of Visual Arts & Architecture)

When I started and I had to decide what to do in life - because I was working with museums, in exhibition design, and on the restoration of buildings - and then at some point, I had the chance to arrive at the Venice Biennale and my whole perspective changed. And it changed because I was working with living artists and architects. Until that moment, I was working around Old Masters, works in museums, and things that were there with the aura of history. And all of a sudden I was dealing with living architects and artists, and this was, for me, the most incredible experience. So I decided to leave all the rest, because I was doing quite a lot at the same time, and to concentrate on the Biennale.

ARMOND COHEN - Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force

ARMOND COHEN - Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force

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Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force

There's no such thing as completely clean energy. We use that term a lot, but it's not really true. We have low carbon energy, and lower carbon energy, but any kind of industrial system has requirements for materials and processing, and nothing is completely natural in the industrial world. If we can electrify transportation, I think we can clean up the grid, and then I think we can deal with these life cycle issues in a way that's responsible, but it'll never be zero. That's impossible. The good thing about technology is it can move very fast. And so my advice would be if you're interested in this topic, if you have a mathematical, scientific, or business orientation, or you just like solving problems, get trained to really be part of the technological business revolution that's going on right now.