Claude Nicollier speaking at FIFAD

FIFAD Day 5 – A visit from Claude Nicollier and more

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On the Fifth day of the FIFAD event Claude Nicollier came. He is the Swiss Astronaut who went on a number of STS missions to fix the Hubble Telescope between 1992 to 1999. He is an astrophysicist with connections to this part of Switzerland. The Sonneurs D’ormont rang cow bells as the group moved from one area to another. The conference centre where this event is taking place is now named after him.

Le Printemps Des Rennes

The film looks at the Saami people living in Norway who move their herds from winter to summer grazing grounds. These people and their way of life face threats from the modern way of life with children being tempted by other careers, their own people, some of whom want to fence in specific areas so that only their herds can graze their and from energy companies that want to move in and use certain areas for energy production and to exploit other resources.

Mira

Mira is a Nepalese woman who was part of the Maoist army and grew up facing manual tasks such as fetching water and more. Her young life resulted in her getting to a certain level of fitness that would help her eventually win trail running competitions. She travelled to Australia, Italy and Hong Kong to compete.

D’Homme et de Glace

D’Homme et de Glace made me think of the “making of” films by the Natural history unit that you see at the end of each episode. In this documentary we see the crew go to interesting locations by the sea side and in the mountains to illustrate climate change. The way in which it focuses on a specific individual reminded me of Cousteau documentaries. I still prefer what the BBC Natural History Unit produce. This project did not have as much time to work on getting beautiful shots so the comparison is less relevant.

Bartas

Bartas is a slack lining film where a group of people flew to the Reunion island to practice the sport. They met the challenges of weather and went from location to location to find the best location from which to set up a slackline and successfully cross from one side to the other. They tried on the coast, above a waterfall and eventually they set up and set a world record above a valley with a slack line of 403 metres. The vista where they wet this record is nice. This record has since been beaten a number of times.