Fall and Winter

Tracing the deep roots of civilisation's assault on the natural world.

The premonitions of the wise men of the Hopi people in the United States serve as the starting point for this documentary, which investigates the origins of the current environmental crisis and its growing threat to life on the planet. The warning signs of those who once lived in far greater harmony with nature have become a present-day certainty, as pollution, drought, and the exhaustion of natural resources accelerate at an unprecedented rate.

Over the course of two years, director Matt Anderson drove 16,000 miles across the American landscape to document firsthand the modern industrial world and the environmental destruction left in its wake. The result is Fall and Winter, a film of striking cinematography that moves between sweeping natural vistas and scenes of industrial ruin, giving the viewer a visceral sense of what is being lost.

Much has been written about climate change and the unsustainability of contemporary civilisation, and it is precisely this body of thought that Anderson engages through interviews with some of today's most progressive thinkers. From anthropologists and bio-architects to psychologists and journalists, these voices collectively reconstruct a story of humanity and of the Earth itself, examining how the adoption of industrial agriculture, the suppression of indigenous ways of life, and the relentless logic of development have brought us to the current crisis.

The film also looks to those working on practical alternatives, from experimental sustainable communities to new approaches in architecture and land use, in an effort to illuminate a path beyond the catastrophe. Rooted in deep historical perspective and rich in visual detail, Fall and Winter is an essay on the environmental and psychological challenges of our time, and a call to reconsider our fundamental relationship with the natural world.