Each summer for more than half a century, the US ecologist and biologist David Inouye has returned to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado. Working out of a small cabin, he examines how life is persisting and changing in the high-altitude mountain meadow, focusing on the relationship between wildflowers and hummingbirds. As To Know a Place details, this pilgrimage has become a family affair, with his son Brian and granddaughter Miyoko joining the annual excursion to help measure, count, observe and share how time and climate are shaping life in the meadow. The Colorado-based director Brendan Young’s documentary is a stirring portrait of both place and family. Capturing the sweeping beauty of the region, the film explores why the often-exciting, ever-evolving and always-humbling business of understanding how life works on even a small slice of Earth is a ceaseless pursuit.
Director: Brendan Young
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Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
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History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Leading 1950s thinkers on the search for happiness in trying times
29 minutes
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Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes