INTERVIEW WITH BAYLEY SILLECK, DIRECTOR OF LOST WORLDS, LIFE IN
THE BALANCE
What was the inspiration for making this film?
At the start of any project, I like to read everything about the subject
that I can find. When I began this film, I first read a beautiful
book called The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson. And
this book, this subject, really opened my mind to a new way of looking
at nature. I think that people feel increasingly separate from nature,
especially those of us who live in big cities. I believe that as filmmakers,
we have a responsibility to try and bridge that gap. Reading Wilson's
work was really the first time I saw a way to do that.
What does biodiversity mean to you?
To me, biodiversity offers a new way of looking at the world. Until
very recently, we've concerned ourselves with saving individual endangered
species and habitats—the tiger, the panda, the sea otter—but
it's really entire ecosystems we should be concerned about most. As
Ed Wilson says, "Nature runs the world precisely as we would wish
it to be run." And it does so through countless complex interactions
between plants, animals, insects, fungi, bacteria and other micro-organisms.
We don't know exactly how all these things relate to each other, but
we do know that diversity, variety, whatever you call it, is critical
to the health of the planet. We also know that our common goal should
be saving intact ecosystems with as much diversity as possible. If
we can do that, we can save many individual species within them.
Why is it important that this film is being made and released now?
I think it's important for all media to convey to the public the critical
importance of this issue. Biodiversity is just beginning to gain attention
and from a human perspective, it's really about ecosystem services—how
nature benefits us. That may sound like a selfish way of looking at
it, but for all our technological sophistication, we are still dependent
on nature for basic necessities, like clean water, arable soil, and
medicines, which come from natural substances. Take aspirin, for example,
which comes from the willow. We need to start seeing the planet as
a system, a system that needs all of its components, because when
you start to deplete those components, whether by accident or through
deliberate destruction, you begin to change that habitat in ways we
can't even begin to understand. We're losing thousands of species
every year, most of which we've never even known about, and it's become
such an urgent situation that field biologists are like paramedics
out there, trying to save, find, and understand species before they
disappear.
I believe this film will excite people and help us to understand that
we are part of nature, that the fate of nature is ours as well. The
year 2001 is also the International Year of Biodiversity, so it's
a really timely way of celebrating the planet and the amazing diversity
of life that still exists.
Why IMAX?
MAX films allow audiences to reconsider their place in the natural
world because they provide such visceral immersion in the subject
matter. Also, the story of biodiversity is one of scale, of immense
landscapes, but also of microscopic life. Just the idea that there
could be as many as 10,000 different species in a teaspoon of healthy
soil is amazing to me. The size of the IMAX frame allows us to play
with that sense of scale, to shrink audiences and to take them to
miniature worlds, places that they could never otherwise enter: into
a faucet, under the soil, into a carnivorous plant, or to grand, spectacular
places like Mount Roraima in Venezuela, which looks and feels like
another planet.
How do you tell the story of biodiversity for the giant screen?
We decided to tell the story of biodiversity by following a team of
scientists on an expedition to places that we know almost nothing
about, and where few people have ever been. It's really an adventure
to parts of the world where biodiversity is most intact, most unique,
places that are brimming with life, where ecosystems are functioning
as they have for millenniums.
The film asks the question, "What keeps all civilizations alive?"
and then takes the audience on a journey to various "lost worlds"
around the Earth to demonstrate that within each ecosystem, it is
the variety, the diversity of life, that keeps everything healthy,
including us. At the start of the film, we find ourselves in the "Lost
City" of Tikal, a once-great center of the Mayan civilization that
was abandoned about a thousand years ago. Why? We then cut to New
York and ask, "Could what happened at Tikal happen here?" We visit
the high plateaus of Venezuela, popularly known as the "lost world,"
which are hidden from view and largely unexplored. We take the audience
to the giant kelp beds off the Californian coastline, where—because
the sea otter, a critical component of its ecosystem, had been hunted
to extinction—the ecosystem had become something of a lost world.
Now that the otter has been restored, the natural order has been reestablished.
Even though the sea otters are still endangered, this is a success
story that shows how human awareness and efforts can make a difference.
We also visit a hidden world that most of us don't ever think about,
even though it is responsible for cleaning the air that we breathe,
building the soil we grow our food in, and purifying the water that
we drink. This is going on in the very ground beneath our feet, where
the soil, the "dirt," is teeming with billions of microbes and organisms
going about their business.
What led you to select Harrison Ford as the narrator?
We always wanted to have Harrison Ford as our narrator. He was the
perfect choice for many reasons. First, his image as Indiana Jones,
searching for exotic treasures, makes him someone audiences would
willingly go on a quest with. In this case, of course, the quest is
for scientific knowledge, exploring the diversity of places that are
still hidden and mysterious. Second, in his offscreen life, Harrison
Ford is a dedicated environmentalist who is doing serious, effective
work with Conservation International to save natural habitats. He
brings a lot of integrity, commitment, and feeling to the subject.
So I was thrilled when Harrison agreed to be the voice of our film.
