34 NEWSWEEK.COM OCTOBER 04, 2019
nthropocene: the human epoch is a
documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal,
Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky that
paints a beautiful and terrifying picture of what human beings are
doing to the Earth.
Since the early 1980s Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer, has
been documenting what he calls “intentional landscapes,” the big
and lasting marks that human activities like mining and farm-
ing are making on the planet. The film is the third collaboration
between Burtynsky and documentary filmmakers Baichwal and de
Pencier—the first was Manufactured Landscapes (2006) followed
by Watermark (2013)—and is a companion to a coffee-table book
of large photographs and a touring museum exhibit. The documen-
tary opened in the United States on September 25.
The title comes from a word used by some geologists to describe
the period of natural history we are all living in right now. It was
popularized by Paul Crutzen, a Dutch Nobel Prize–winning
atmospheric chemist who has studied climate change. During the
1980s, Burtynsky says, Crutzen realized “We as a species have for
the first time been such a force on the planet that we have moved
it from one geological epoch to another. We have now created a
footprint that has left its signature in the future strata of the planet
so geologists a million years from now if they dig something up
they’ll say, ‘This is from the anthropocene, when humans on the
planet were the dominant species.’”
The filmmakers traveled all over the world to make dramatic
aerial images of an enormous landfill in Nairobi, Kenya; forests
damaged by oil spills in Nigeria; Italy’s Carrara marble quarries; a
gigantic open pit coal mine in Germany; a concrete seawall under
construction in China and several other sites. The vistas are crisp
and full of brilliant colors, but most also carry a mood of foreboding.
Baichwal, however, says she and her partners had no intention of
preaching. Many films about the environment, she says, hit viewers
with “a sense of urgency that leaves everybody incredibly depressed