The universal United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide humanity with a first-ever set of integrated aspirational goals for world development aligned with planetary sustainability. While extremely inspiring, this global narrative needs to find resonance, be validated and taken on board in the everyday life of billions of people worldwide. Sustainability is a vision for the 21 century which to be realized will require the wide engagement of people all over the world.

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“Lines of the Anthropocene” is a feature-length creative documentary at the highest cinematic standards, bringing together frontier perspectives from Earth System Science, Humanities, Social Sciences and practice to create a widely accessible narrative about sustainability in the 21 century. Blending interview material and animations, “Lines of the Anthropocene” will generate novel imagery and language to support shifts in perspectives with regard to humans’ relationships with the living world. 

Film Content

The film is based on the content of  interviews with academics, practitioners and philosophers. The final product will be a “modular” 79 minutes film, that can be viewed as a whole or be shared in social media in shorter segments varying from 3 to 7 minutes. The interviews content communicates with accessible language the most up-to-date sustainability science and portrays the SDGs as an inspiring vision for the world.

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Some of the interviews already conducted include:

• British Anthropologist Prof. Tim Ingold, on a relational perspective of humans and nature. 

• Prof. Karen O'Brien, the nature of the climate adaptation challenge and the role of individual agency

• Prof. Will Steffen, the challenges of the Anthropocene.

• and authors of "Making Peace with Nature" report.

Visual Approach

Interviews are being illustrated with animations by Oscar nominee Michelle Kranot. These are hand-painted animations that that use a playful and imaginative approach to enliven the content and make it more accessible to a wider audience. 
Animations give life and reimagine central concepts such as the anthropocene, planetary boundaries. They are sensitive and humorist at times. The visual and sonic language has ample contemplative space.

Distribution

The film will target mainstream cinema channels and television nationally and internationally and finally be released freely online. The innovative and striking animations will be created with the wide public in mind, as well as specific fora of debate and sustainability practice such as the UN High-Level Political Forum (UN-HLPF).