Okay, sometimes and most of the time we all struggle to make a choice here and there. We get indecisive but usually we play some form of trivial game or random draw to finalize our decision. This applies when choosing movies too especially because you want to spend those couple hours watching something you find interesting or often we go by reviews too- what most others critique and comment on movies. The same applied to me this term when Dr. Bazely asked us to drop in three movies relating to applied plant ecology and more specifically when she asked us to nominate one out of all three. This is when my indecisiveness hit me once again- phew!
So, it all came down to when we had a couple weeks to sit back, relax, and start watching movies as homework! I started looking into my primary go-to search engine- google, where I searched for films and documentaries relating to topics close to applied plant ecology. There I found a couple suggestions and what I did to ensure I did not waste time watching the movies and get through halfway only to find out it was not going to entirely relate to this course and the topics was I read up on the summary and prognosis of the movies. I found two documentaries interesting as well as one nonfiction movie. I will share a brief overview and the reason why I thought these three selections of mine would have made a difference in my peers’ eyes as well as mine especially in relevance to the topics surrounding applied plant ecology both analyzed in class as well as in the day-to-day life.
Here we start with a documentary I suggested in one of the three movie selections.
This documentary is by a historian Sir David Attenborough who portrays the continuing sixth mass extinction, caused by humans, and the consequences of biodiversity loss and climate change. I thought this would be a very nice film to see because of all the concepts it covers within extinction and the various causes induced by humans which is something we should all see and educate ourselves on. However, it did not win the number one place in my trivial brain game so, on we go to the next film…
The Martian – this movie is about when a bunch of astronauts blast off from Mars back to Earth, they leave behind Mark Watney (the main character), presumed dead after a fierce storm. The nonfiction then goes on to show how Mark survives on Mars using his knowledge of recreating some form of life through plants on Mars and keeping himself alive. I found this film very interesting to watch and it was a very close tie between nominating this film versus the next documentary I’m about to share.
And….here it is!!! The tiebreaker champion!!! In the mind of plants by Jaques Mitsch was the documentary film I finally settled on in terms of nominating because of how captivating it was with the dialogue and the different cases shared. The film touches upon famine and resource scarceness where many plants had died off in the Savannah desert and find that populations of Kudu (a type of animal) are mysteriously dying off. The different illustrations drawn from different parts of the world in this documentary, it speaks to different concepts such as; sustainable forestry, rare plant conservation, and a lot of the other topics from the course itself too.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 