Climate Journalism on Screen

February 2–23, 2025

Drawing on a variety of documentary techniques, these four recent films ambitiously reckon with climate change through their multifaceted subjects. Each program includes a post-screening discussion.

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Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, Pedro Kos: The White House Effect, 2024
Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan: Nocturnes, 2024
Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi: The Battle for Laikipia, 2024
Ben Addelman, Ziya Tong: Plastic People, 2024

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The White House Effect
Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, Pedro Kos
United States, 2024
Sunday, February 2 12:30 PM
Jon Shenk, Justine Nagan, and Jennifer Redfearn in Conversation
Briskly told through the lens of contemporaneous media, The White House Effect is a forensic accounting of how, through the 1980s and 1990s the United States government arrived at a political consensus of cataclysmic inaction on climate change.
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Nocturnes
Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan
India, United States, 2024
Saturday, February 8 3:00 PM
Patrick Gonzalez, Sugata Ray, and Jason Spingarn-Koff in Conversation
Winner of a Special Jury Award for Craft at the Sundance Film Festival, the immersive Nocturnes tracks a small research team through the verdant Eastern Himalayas for a study of the local population of hawk moths. Screening with Stan Brakhage’s Mothlight.
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Plastic People
Ben Addelman, Ziya Tong
Canada, 2024
Sunday, February 9 1:00 PM
Ting Xu, Tracey Woodruff, and Shannon Jackson in Conversation
“One of those essential state-of-our-world documentaries” (Variety), Plastic People is an efficient and emotional chronicle of the exponential growth of the plastics industry and its global and physiological impact.
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The Battle for Laikipia
Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi
Kenya, Greece, United States, 2024
Sunday, February 23 1:00 PM
Maya Craig, Miswa Basil, and Jennifer Redfearn in Conversation
Drought, dwindling resources, and contentious elections in equatorial Kenya exacerbate the conflict between semi-nomadic Indigenous pastoralists and wealthy white ranchers in this documentary epic. “A tense, beautiful, and heartbreaking film” (Vulture).
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Climate Journalism on Screen

February 2–23, 2025

Climate change is here. It is a fact of daily life. The Industrial Revolution and ensuing turn-of-the-twentieth-century boom of contemporary existence–defining invention (cars, planes, plastics, you name it) were the starting point of a crisis that is rapidly pushing our global ecosystem toward collapse. There are root causes everywhere you look, fingers to be pointed in blame. What this film series aims to do is highlight recent work ambitious enough to reckon with the history and ideas that brought us here, stare into the current crisis, and boldly explore ways forward. These documentaries do not pretend to address climate change as a whole, but instead approach their multifaceted subjects with a clear-eyed understanding of the facts on the ground and in the atmosphere.

Each of the four movies draws on varying documentary techniques. The White House Effect utilizes archival footage to capture the cataclysmic...

Each of the four movies draws on varying documentary techniques. The White House Effect utilizes archival footage to capture the cataclysmic transition period when the human impact on rising global temperatures shifted from a factual scientific consensus to just another political wedge issue. Nocturnes patiently revels in the beauty of the environment, while researchers contemplate its demise. Plastic People is investigative activist cinema, engaging scientists on the bleeding edge of study. The Battle for Laikipia is a sprawling documentary Western, its subjects spurred into conflict over land scarred by drought and colonization.

The series is presented in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Each screening will be accompanied by a post-screening discussion, some with the filmmakers, some drawing from the expertise of UC Berkeley faculty and researchers.

—Jeff Griffith-Perham, Film Exhibition Curatorial Associate

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Thanks to Jason Spingarn-Koff, Professor of Journalism and Knight Chair of Climate Journalism at UC Berkeley, and Jennifer Redfearn, Director of the Documentary Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.