The team behind Global Oneness Project will have their latest film, Earthrise, premiere at this year's Tribeca Film Festival on the 21st of April! Earthrise, by award-winning Director Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, sees the Apollo 8 astronauts recount and reflect on their experience of capturing the first image of Earth from Space back in 1968.
The entire film is told solely by the Apollo 8 astonauts, and explores the beauty, awe and grandeur of the Earth against the eternal blackness of space.
It has been fifty years since this image was first shared with the world and had a lasting impact on astronauts and humanity at the time, transcending the barriers of religion, politics and nations. The emotive power of the photograph helped to kickstart the environmental movement, helped humanity to see our Earth as one ecosystem and is one of the most iconic and widely reproduced and distrubuted images in history.
The humbling effect of the image of Earth from space – and the barrier breaking consequences of this – makes Earthrise's release this year extremely timely. During a time where hate speech and divisions are on the rise, the Earthrise photograph compels us to reflect on Earth as a shared home and the film can help to remind and inspire audiences to rise above and come together to face threats against humanity and our home.
Not only have the team at Global Oneness Project created a beautiful film, but they've created learning materials to accompany it too. Earthrise will be available for all educators to screen in their classrooms in the near future, accompanied with a curriculum guide – completely for free! The Earthrise Curriculum Guide will include historical information and background, an interactive discussion and action guide, and conversation cards. The cards will be used to deepen learning as pre-film warm ups to introduce the film, as catalysts for post-film discussions, and for writing prompts as well as actions for class projects. The guide is suitable for a wide range of educational settings and will have entry points for multiple subjects, including the social sciences, English language arts, environmental sciences, and space exploration.
Earthrise presents an amazing opportunity for educators and communities to raise awareness and stimulate discussions about the relationship we have with our rapidly changing planet. To get kids talking, Global Oneness Project are creating partnerships to enable as many children as possible to see the film and to learn about the issues the film raises. This includes arranging student panel discussions around the film, reaching out to museums worldwide and even creating a partnership with Universe Awareness, another of the innovations chosen for HundrED 2018. The Earthrise film and curriculum have been piloted in US schools and Global Oneness Project will work with Universe Awareness to pilot it internationally in education.
We're really excited to see the whole film and the discussions this leads to young people being engaged in! If you're in New York and attending Tribeca Film Festival, you can see Earthrise on the 21st, 24th, 25th and 28th of April. Tickets and more information can be found here. The film will be available online in July on The New York Times Op-Docs and on the PBS series POV.
