[Coral-List] 'Chasing Coral' Wins Sundance

[Mark Eakin - NOAA Federal]

Chasing Coral is the latest feature-length documentary directed by Jeff Orlowski (director of Chasing Ice). The film premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the Audience Award for best US Documentary film at Saturday’s Awards Ceremony.

What is Chasing Coral?  From IMDB:
 "Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world." 

In a nutshell, the team combined time-lapse photography skills previously used to document the retreat of glaciers with new underwater technology and guided by NOAA Coral Reef Watch’s products to attempt to capture the process of bleaching and death of corals in time-lapse. For those of you who were at the ICRS Town Hall on bleaching last summer, you saw early results from this effort. NOAA Coral Reef Watch's Coordinator, Dr. Mark Eakin, is one of the on-screen scientists and one of the film’s two Chief Scientific Advisors. The film will serve as a powerful outreach tool to convince people of the need to conserve coral reefs as well as to take action on climate change.

You can learn more about the film at http://www.chasingcoral.com <http://www.chasingcoral.com/>, watch a 2-minute with director Jeff Orlowski (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mbnni6BRZ4 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mbnni6BRZ4>) or read the review on Indiwire (http://www.indiewire.com/2017/01/chasing-coral-review-jeff-orlowski-sundance-2017-1201773597/ <http://www.indiewire.com/2017/01/chasing-coral-review-jeff-orlowski-sundance-2017-1201773597/>). 

On the day of its premiere, Exposure Labs signed an agreement with Netflix and Chasing Coral will premiere on Netflix later this year as a "Netflix Originals" presentation. After its premiere, Chasing Coral will be made available for showings everywhere as part of an extensive impact campaign. We expect that NOAA screenings will be arranged. If you have a community group, dive club, worship community, or other organization that would like to screen the film, you can sign up on http://www.chasingcoral.com <http://www.chasingcoral.com/>.

Cheers,
Mark

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C. Mark Eakin, Ph.D.
Coordinator, NOAA Coral Reef Watch
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Center for Satellite Applications and Research
Satellite Oceanography & Climate Division
e-mail: mark.eakin at noaa.gov
url: coralreefwatch.noaa.gov
Twitter: @CoralReefWatch	FB: Coral Reef Watch

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