Heat

 Screening Room III

The Story of Cod
Marina Rees

Short

Natural cycles, ecosystems and the life-histories of species are being upended as our planet warms. The Story of Cod opens Heat by tracing those ruptures through the life of the Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua. As Rees notes, the piece is “informed by current research, and the impact of warming waters on this species”: some populations are already migrating to deeper, cooler waters in warmer seasons, and models predict spawning grounds will shift poleward as temperatures rise.

She foregrounds the food-web consequences too: “the favoured plankton preys of juvenile Gadus morhua in its larval stage – the copepods Calanus finmarchicus and C. glacialis – have started to shift their seasonal reproduction due to climate change, which is in turn, impacting the fish’s development.” This scientific frame underpins a film that seeks to reconnect us with a species often reduced to commodity. Rees writes plainly: “The Story of Cod seeks to reconnect with a species often overlooked, or simply seen as food... So who is Gadus morhua, and what is their story?”

Narrated by Sigurþór Heimisson who lends his voice to embody Gadus morhua, and underscored by the fish’s own recorded sounds, the film resists speaking for the cod. In Rees’s words, “This is not pretending to place words into Gadus morhua’s mouth. It is a human attempt to become more-than-human, to learn to identify with them and imagine a shared future together.” By opening this Screening Room with such an attentive portrait, Heat extends Ground’s examination of broken cycles – showing how surface-level practices are entangled with deeper seasonal and oceanographic shifts that together redefine the baseline of our present.

The Sturgeon Jumping Invitational
Luke Myers

Short

Whilst we considered placing Luke Myers’s unique form of hybrid sports film in the Return section of the festival – as a light-hearted celebration of an ancient species, an awareness raising and engaging environmental artwork – we instead positioned it among pieces exploring the theme of planetary heating. Sturgeon fish could be described as living fossils, but warming waters are a very modern threat: small changes in river and estuary temperature can scramble the narrow windows they use to migrate and spawn, so eggs and larvae – which tolerate only a very small temperature range – suffer big losses. Warmer water increases metabolic demand and lowers oxygen, disrupts the bottom-dwelling prey young sturgeon rely on, and raises disease risk – all of which reduce survival and push fish into less suitable habitats.

Many sturgeon populations are already small and have reduced genetic diversity after decades of over harvesting, damming, and habitat loss, so their ability to adapt quickly to rapid warming is greatly limited. That makes conservation harder: restoring habitat or restocking fish won’t succeed if rivers and nurseries continue to warm.

The film could be read as a call for protecting cold-water flows, restoring estuaries and river connectivity, and supporting monitoring and climate-aware recovery so this ancient fish still has a future, and spectacles such as this continue to captivate. “The sight of a fish breaching, silvery body arching high in the air, before a dramatic crash back into the water, has captivated us across time and culture” Myers tells us. “Ancient theories held that fish leap due to parasites. Recent scientific research suggests sturgeon jump for communication, or air bladder adjustment. But no one knows for sure.”

Production: Luke Myers
Courtesy of the artist

Canoe
Anne-Katrin Spiess

Short

“For over a decade, my continued concerns about water issues and desertification have led to a series of projects and performances in various arid locations across the Western United States. When the water level of Great Salt Lake was at a historic low in the fall of 2022, I performed Canoe, which documents my search for water in a quixotic attempt to paddle across the lake but instead having to wade through layers of toxic mud.

This project is part of the larger Great Salt Lake Projects series, which addresses our illusion of having endless resources, of being above the rules of nature, and that, as humans, we are entitled to living a life of excess. In this group of videos, my Sisyphean attempt to water and mow a patch of sod, ride a bike on the parched earth, and pull a canoe through the toxic and nearly dry lakebed are subtle commentaries on the unquenchable thirst for human expansion into the desert.”