As Canadians prepare to celebrate the best in documentary filmmaking at this year’s Hot Docs Festival, Bell Media’s Crave, home to an unmatched collection of more than 500 documentaries, commemorates Earth Day with two powerful and moving original documentaries from some of Canada’s most prolific and celebrated filmmakers.
Following a worldwide theatrical run and multiple international film festival screenings – including a World Premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival – the Crave Original Documentary SHARKWATER EXTINCTION is an inspiring and action-packed journey that follows award-winning filmmaker Rob Stewart as he exposes the massive illegal shark fin industry and the corruption behind it. The film has its world television and streaming premiere on Monday, April 22 at 9 p.m. ET, only on Crave.
On the heels of its world television and streaming premiere on Saturday, April 20 at 9 p.m. ET, the Crave Original Documentary ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH re-airs on Earth Day at 10 p.m. ET, only on Crave. From multiple-award winning filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, and world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky, the film is a cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet. Nominated for two Canadian Screen Awards, it has screened at multiple film festivals, including the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and earlier this year was named Best Canadian Film by the Toronto Film Critics Association.
In addition, Crave’s Earth Day Collection (launching Friday, April 19) features titles such as HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD, SAVING MY TOMORROW, THE YEAR THE EARTH WENT WILD, ROGUE EARTH, GLOBAL MELTDOWN, GEOSTORM, FATAL TWISTERS: A SEASON OF FURY, JAPAN’S KILLER QUAKE, INSIDE PLANET EARTH, ATLAS 4D, and THE 11th HOUR.
About SHARKWATER EXTINCTION
The Crave Original Documentary SHARKWATER EXTINCTION is Rob Stewart’s third film following the multi-award winning SHARKWATER (2006) and REVOLUTION (2012). Receiving rave reviews and multiple international awards, the film follows Stewart’s courageous crusade across four continents to investigate the corruption behind the multi-billion-dollar pirate fishing trade and massive illegal shark fin industry. From West Africa, Spain, Panama, Costa Rica, France, and even North America, Stewart exposes the shocking truth that is leading to the extinction of the world’s oldest remaining predator.
In January 2017, while shooting SHARWATER EXTINCTION, Stewart tragically passed away during a dive off the Florida Keys. Award-winning editor Nick Hector was given the daunting task of sifting through Stewart’s copious hours of footage and reams of detailed notes to create the final cut of the film. His efforts were supported by award-winning documentary filmmaker Sturla Gunnarsson who acted as a consultant to the team.
Created as a companion piece to the film, Sharkwater.com was designed with the support of Bell Media as a definitive source for those wanting to discover more about sharks, the threat to their survival, and what people can do to support Rob’s mission to save sharks and our oceans. The site includes an educational guide, comprehensive shark database, and a downloadable 360 VR experience, Rob Stewart’s Swimming with Sharks, that was developed in collaboration with Occupied VR and immerses viewers in Rob’s underwater world.
About ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH
Third in a trilogy of films that includes MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (2006) and WATERMARK (2013), the Crave Original Documentary ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH is a four-years-in-the-making feature film that follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group, who, since 2009, have been gathering evidence that our 12,000-year-old geological epoch, the Holocene, has given way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century as a result of profound and lasting human changes to the Earth.
From concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60% of the mainland coast, to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, to psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s Ural Mountains, to metal festivals in the closed city of Norilsk, to the devastated Great Barrier Reef in Australia and surreal lithium evaporation ponds in the Atacama desert, the filmmakers traversed the globe using state of the art camera techniques to document the evidence and experience of human planetary domination.
The documentary is part of The Anthropocene Project, a multimedia venture from de Pencier, Burtynsky, and Baichwal which also includes:
- two major museum exhibitions that debuted last fall at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and National Gallery of Canada (NGC), before travelling to Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia (MAST) in Bologna in Spring 2019;
- immersive interactive experiences in augmented and virtual reality;
- an art book published by Steidl and an exhibition catalogue published by the AGO;
- and a comprehensive educational program.
