The 33rd D.C. Environmental Film Festival: Films That Inspire Change
Anirban Dutta, Anupama Srinivasan / 2024 / 83 min. / India, USA
by Isaac Welsh
The 33rd Annual D.C. Environmental Film Festival (DCEFF) kicked off on March 20th, beginning a nine-day showcase of films that highlight developments and discoveries in the natural world, aiming to inspire audiences toward lasting changes for the health of Earth’s ecology.
The festival showcased various film topics and niches at multiple locations throughout D.C. Museum-goers at the Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art had the opportunity to catch a matinee screening of Nocturnes on March 23rd, a 2024 film and Sundance Award Winner directed by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan.
The film follows quantitative ecologist Mansi Mungee and a small team of her assistants in an enduring study of moth populations in the Eastern Himalayas- specifically, hawk moths in the mountains of Bhutan. From the film's onset, viewers are immersed in these lush and bouldered valleys with their quiet beckonings away from the preoccupations of human activity and pulled further into a world hidden from those who walk the day. The film's 83-minute runtime is a hypnotic blend of beautiful compositions and a meditative score, echoing Mungee's dedicated study. It reveals the hidden importance of the insects and their powerful landscape.
The film’s direction and composition blend elements of a traditional science documentary and an artistic moving picture that creates cinematic storytelling and leaves room for the audience’s curiosity to wander. The film's narrative is never told directly to the camera itself, but through open dialogue between colleagues, the pace of their theory and discoveries is explained. This progression is subtly marked by captured natural phenomena that make their way into the film. A rolling mass of fog brings us through the passing morning hours, while lightning trails scattered through the valley show us that a storm has come to blanket the mountains by night. At times, it is unknown if these moments have transpired over months at a time or within a single day.
The film also earns characterization from the ambience it captures and weaves throughout its pictures. In wide shot, humming with low frequencies, the noise of the jungle night replaces silence and shushes the theatre, repositioning man from supreme being to a humble and vulnerable accompaniment to a community of predator and prey. At daybreak, birdsong ushers in an air of safety where sunrays cut through forest branches. Then, there are the moments where the moths take center stage. They are often displayed on Mungee’s light screens, congregating under a stark blue in numbers a single set of eyes couldn’t count alone.
As the lens brings the moth in closer view, the rapid flappings of its wings become thunderous thrashings of wind, filling the airspace with the kind of rigor that isn't often associated with a creature of that size. While working as part of the storytelling, these elements also give the moths and the observers a new perspective, aligning with DCEFF’s mission to inspire positive change by forcing viewers to scale themselves down.
Though initially bewildering, Mungee and her team’s work is demystified as viewers become more familiar with the techniques and the tools they use throughout the film. The sisyphus boulder-like dedication of setting up their light screens along different intervals through the valley, inventive creation of new research techniques, the meticulous sifting through samples and photo evidence amassing in the thousands, and the moments of contemplation candidly captured between these tasks bring a familiar and human quality to what otherwise may be seen as an obsessive occupation. Slowly, through this meticulous grinding of stone, the audience becomes attuned to see a figure shaping out of the ecologists’ committed efforts.
Mungee’s findings and the message she's sought to bring to the world become more clearly revealed. After more than an hour spent watching in awe of these creatures in their habitat, the audience is immediately reminded of the debts and responsibility that mankind owes them. The hawk moths' vital role in maintaining the thriving Bhutan mountain region has come under threat of climate change, and Mungee makes it clear that though the effect may begin in a subtle manifestation, its ultimate end could be catastrophic if not maintained.
While most are well aware of the persisting damages that global warming has brought to our planet, for some, it will take the realization of knowing there is much to lose by their actions. Dutta, Srinivasan, and the team behind Nocturne’s capture the vast natural beauty of the Bhutan mountains, and bring light and grandeur to the intricacies of a lesser thought of insect in such a way realizes them truly as works of divine artistry, and allows Mungee and her team's love and obsessions to be well understood. Their dedicated effort works as a compelling piece demonstrating the worthiness of their cause and the creatures inhabiting this land.