MNN - Mother Nature Network

Millions of people have seen photographer Chris Jordan's beautiful and incredibly disturbing photos of Laysan albatrosses, revealing rotting bodies riddled with plastic waste even though they live on Midway Island, 2,000 miles from the nearest human habitation. Now he's turned those eco art photographs into a film to be released later in 2013, and from what I can see of the trailer (below), it is going to be an incredible film. Titled "Midway: Message from the Gyre," it is both "elegy and warning," according to the film's site. 

"Near the heart of the Pacific Ocean, Midway Island is one of the most remote places on Earth, and the iconic site of a world-changing naval battle. Today Midway is inhabited by a million Laysan albatrosses — magnificent and beautiful seabirds who range over the entire Pacific from their home base on the island. Midway is a multi-layered kaleidoscope of natural wonder and human history, and it also serves as a powerful lens into a shocking environmental tragedy: tens of thousands of albatrosses lie dead on the ground, their bodies filled with plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch.

 

"Returning to the island over several years, our team has witnessed and filmed cycles of birth, life, and death of these birds as a multi-layered metaphor for our time. With internationally acclaimed artist Chris Jordan as our guide, our film will walk directly into the fire of horror and grief, facing the immensity of this tragedy — and our own complicity — head on."

 

You can donate to help make this film a reality here. 

 

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