Chasing Ice

Chasing Ice (2012) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM. National Geographic photographer James Balog spent years as a climate-change skeptic — until an assignment sent him north and changed his mind.

Back home, Balog launched his own project, the Extreme Ice Survey. He planted dozens of automated cameras across Greenland, Iceland and Alaska to shoot the glaciers frame by frame, season after season. The result is a time-lapse record of ancient ice retreating and breaking apart. The cold kept wrecking his gear, and he kept going on a bad knee.

Director Jeff Orlowski makes it personal rather than preachy — one stubborn man and the images he risked everything to get. The film took the cinematography prize at Sundance, and its closing song, "Before My Time," landed an Oscar nomination. The shot of a Manhattan-sized slab of glacier collapsing into the sea is hard to shake. Stream Chasing Ice (2012) online on iFILM.