Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
The world has lost some 11 per cent of its tree cover since 2000, mainly due to agricultural expansion and wildfires. This shrinking is especially alarming given forests’ vital role in removing carbon from the atmosphere, which helps to curb climate change, and in maintaining biodiversity, which can help to prevent future pandemics. In Deforest, Grayson Cooke, an artist and associate professor of media at Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia, explores deforestation in a beautiful yet distressing work of audiovisual art. A series of monochromatic photographs of an old-growth rainforest in subtropical Queensland are dissolved in a corrosive sulphuric acid bath, serving as a visual metaphor for our destruction of nature. As these images are erased, sounds from the forest’s animal life mingle with a somber piano score, creating a powerful reflection on how humanity burns the past to fuel the present at its own peril.
Director: Grayson Cooke
video
Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
video
Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
video
Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes
video
War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
video
Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
video
Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
video
Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes