I will be screening clips and speaking about this work-in-progress BEHOLD THE EARTH on Sunday at 2:45pm, at the Baird Auditorium of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. Please come if you are in the Washington area this weekend and curious to learn what the production is all about.

The talk and screening is part of the US Environmental Film Festival, in its 18th year. For those of you who are enthusiasts for films about the people/nature connection, there are 155 diverse films screening between March 16th and 28th. Special programs exist for children and are marked by a family-friendly symbol in the festival program.

Our long running series SUNRISE EARTH has several characteristics that set it apart from everything else on mainstream TV. One of these distinctive traits is the show’s pacing. We show you less, and take a long time to do it. Landscapes move at the pace of landscapes, which usually feels slow to most people, especially in light of people’s normal media entertainment (secret confession…even in our show, the editing actually speeds up the mountain). Could today’s TV viewer tolerate a lichen chase scene?

Humans often serve to speed things up, in the name of reaching higher efficiency, productivity, and the minimum threshold of mental excitement without which we probably would perish.

But sometimes we also serve to slow things down. This effort is not only directed at our own activities and perceptions. Dragonflies move incredibly fast. They shift in flight with abrupt angular turns. Their wings move at a speed invisible to the human eye.

Even with the best optical aids, we struggle to see a dragonfly like it was a mountain. Successes like the frame at right are occasional, fleeting, justifying a little celebration and a lot of gratitude.