Join us for three cinematic shorts bearing witness to the shrinking and crumbling of ancient ice landscapes at the hands of the human race.

These RIFA award-nominated and winning films offer an emotional connection to the cold places most of us will never go, where the impacts of climate change are writ large. Offering a humbling weight to the phrase ‘the ice-caps are melting!’, the shorts also open a space for nuanced thought and provide hope for the future through cutting-edge research.

The short films in this programme include:

• A Short Film About Ice(dir: Adam Laity, 2020, 29m). A visually dramatic film-poem documenting the journey of a cinematographer through the changing landscapes of the Arctic, exploring and re-conceptualising notions of the sublime in light of ecological crises and climate breakdown. Winner of Best Climate Emergency Film of the Year, and nominated for the Best Research Film, Best Doctoral or Early Career Film and Inspiration Award categories at RIFA 2020.
• After Ice(dir: Kieran Baxter, 2021, 12m 20s). This short exposes the physical, aesthetic and personal impacts of recent glacier melt in the Hornafjörður region of Southeast Iceland. Where climate change communication must often resort to maps, charts and data to represent the scale of current changes, this film offers an emotive and sobering connection to a place where the impacts of global warming are writ large across the landscape. Nominated for the Best Climate Emergency Film of the Year, RIFA 2021.
• In Hot Water(dir: Jon Spaull, 2020, 5m). Presents the interdisciplinary UK/Peruvian research project CASCADA (led by Jemma Wadham, University of Bristol, and Raul Loayza, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, and funded by the Newton Fund) which studies the impact of glacier retreat on local communities in the Peruvian Andes. Nominated for the Best Climate Emergency Film of the Year, RIFA 2021.

This event is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, part of UKRI) as part of their Research in Film Awards (RIFA) Climate Screenings 2022. The films shown as part of these screenings were shortlisted for the RIFA Best Climate Emergency Film of the Year category 2020/2021 and showcase cutting-edge climate research in the arts and humanities. Free screenings and film events will also take place across Cardiff and Glasgow in April.

---