Documentary “Who We Were” – How We Determine the Future of the World
In his documentary Who We Are, director Mark Bauder is about the future of the Earth and how we can influence that future. His images from space over dry rivers lead to Buddhist monasteries. An astronaut, ocean researcher and economist have their say.
“Who We Were” is a continuation of ideas coined by journalist Roger Willemsen, who died in 2016, that are now being carried into the present and future as “a kind of wand delivery.”
As a soul mate, Willemsen showed the urgency of describing the situation and after the change: “I thought I should find a way to combine initial research into describing the world with this wonderful form of literary confrontation of Roger Williamson.”
Select the state of the earth
In order to find solutions to the climate crisis, the starting point of the film is to assess the state of our “very fragile and beautiful” planet. To this end, Bauder has compiled different perspectives from a wide range of scholars who have long been grappling with the world’s present and future.
In this way it can be shown that we all have the opportunity to coalesce at different points and participate. “This is a very important element that resonated with Roger Williamson and what we are now trying to continue in the film.”
Understand cause and effect
Astronaut Alexander Gerst, for example, explores things from an internal drive and remains flexible to new perspectives:
“When someone we know—Alexander Gerst—suddenly hovers over us and comes from the burning jungles of the Amazon to the wars of mankind in an unpolished spectacle for 3 minutes, it does something to me because I love the immediacy between beauty, between fragility and consequences.”
Resources are limited
Change is hard as long as we continue to detach from the consequences we produce through our actions, says Boder. Attention should be paid to this, for example by the World Overreach Day, that is, the day we use more resources in that year than the Earth can reproduce this year.
“The good news is that we humans are the starting point for the world’s problems – and we are also part of the solution.”
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