CHANGING TIDES Karina Holden’s Blue , the Enviro-doc and Conservationism
In Blue (2017), writer/director Karina Holden asks the audience to dive into the ocean and witness firsthand the way humanity has allowed our most valuable resource to come to the brink of irreversible destruction. It’s a tough film, yet one with the message that, hopefully, not all is lost.
Known predominantly for her directing work on nature documentaries and for having produced the factual programs Luke Warm Sex and Changing Minds: The Inside Story, Holden shows adeptness at marrying the classic nature-documentary style of Jacques Cousteau and David Attenborough with the politically charged ‘enviro-doc’ trend of recent years. Blue is the kind of film that dazzles with beautiful imagery of a sea turtle swimming peacefully among the reef before confronting viewers with footage of men clearing Cape York’s pristine white sands of decaying turtle skeletons, which have washed ashore in a tangled mess of fishing nets and shipping wires. Blue is replete with arresting visuals – shark bodies sinking to the bottom of the sea after having their fins hacked off; seals caught in fishing nets; seabirds that nest far away from mass civilisation, whose stomachs have to be pumped as they are full of plastic debris that has travelled halfway around the world.
Recognising that viewers are likely to mentally turn off when faced withHolden opted to steer clear of simple hand-wringing and ensure that ‘the aesthetics of the film [would] be captivating’. As she puts it:
