Tag: Conservation

Riki the Rhino Aims to Tease with its Conservational Message

Ultimately, Riki the Rhino is about how he can learn to hold his head up high with or without his signature snout.

Riki the Rhino PosterUncork’d Entertainment
Available on Google Play Beginning July 5th, 2022

Riki the Rhino can easily get missed when parents are looking for wholesome animated films for their kids to watch. Thankfully, this film can be streamed too, as it’s uncertain if every big box store will carry the home video release.

This work not only teaches the value of friendship in the same vein as Disney’s The Lion King, but also animal conservation. In order to deal with the latter in a non-violent way, the fights are no less threatening than what one sees at Spanish bullfighting.

It won’t win huge awards because CGI is less than stellar. The production and pixel art is similiar to the effort put behind A Turtle’s Tale, and that’s only because in other countries (Indonesia, in this instance), the production houses don’t have the computer render farms PIXAR has. However, in terms of its narrative, every word and action counts here.

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VFFOnline 2021: How to Give Life Back to Coral Ghosts

Coral Ghosts Publicity StillBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Streaming Online
at the Victoria Film Festival
Get your pass here to view beginning Feb 5th, 2021

Note: Available to view for residents in British Columbia

Coral Ghosts mixes up two ideas, the need to reverse the damaging effects of climate change and preserve the past with still photography, into a rallying cry to reverse the damage done to the reefs around the world. This uphill challenge is tough. Marine biologist Dr. Thomas J. Goreau wants to save the life of more than one ocean. It’s not about Bikini Atoll, where this documentary begins. In an article on The Guardian, Eleanor Ainge Roy wrote, “Steve Palumbi, a professor in marine sciences at the university, said the effects of radiation poisoning on ocean life have never been studied in-depth, and his team’s initial research suggests it is ‘remarkably resilient’.”

Spongebob Squarepants would cry if he saw this work by Andrew Nisker. Not everyone recognizes the tie in of the fictional cartoon ocean world to real life. As for why some marine creatures survived the devastation (and didn’t mutate) while others haven’t is a mystery when the island was recently researched. I personally think it’s because some species returned many decades later after the amount of radiation in the bottom of the sea near these Marshall Islands levelled, even though it’ll still harm human life.

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A Call to Arms: Saving the Moonless Oasis

To discover these delicate forms of life from the age of dinosaurs continue to survive is thrilling, but to preserve those growths, means raising awareness to everyone—divers, sailors and fishermen—about where they live, their significance to the aquatic biosphere and why they must be preserved.

Moonless OasisBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

World Broadcast Premiere
October 31, 8:00pm

In British Columbia and Alberta on CBC’s Absolutely Canadian and streams nationally on CBC GEM

It’s hard to believe that in British Columbia, we have our own Jurassic Park. In our case, it’s not dinosaurs that we have wandering the unexplored regions, but rather in what is growing in deep trenches underwater. Just like the franchise, the lesson conservationists need to teach is how not to meddle with evolution and protect the prehistoric glass sponge reefs from human interference. Otherwise, the result may well create an appropriately (titled) Moonless Oasis.

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