'The Anthropologist' Looks at Effects of Climate Change Through Teenager's Eyes

The Film Society of Summit will present the first area screening of "The Anthropologist," a film that contemplates the fate of the planet from the perspective of an American teenager, on January 22. "The Anthropologist" showcases parallel stories of two women: Margaret Mead, who popularized cultural anthropology in America; and Susie Crate, an environmental anthropologist currently studying the impact of climate change on indigenous communities.

Uniquely revealed from their daughters’ perspectives, Mead and Crate demonstrate a fascination with how societies are forced to negotiate the disruption of their traditional ways of life, whether through encounters with the outside world, or the unprecedented change wrought by melting permafrost, receding glaciers and rising tides. "We traveled around the world to investigate field sites," Director Seth Kramer said, "in order to offer a profound human dimension to the issue of climate change."

In The Anthropologist, Kramer and co-directors Daniel Miller and Jeremy Newberger seek to investigate the changing environments in five international locations including the Saha Republic in Northeastern Siberia, where permafrost is melting, and in the Peruvian Andes, where the Pastoruri glacier is losing mass and melting away.

The Anthropologist has been an official selection of several very competitive film festivals including DOC-NYC last month. Indiewire listed The Anthroplogist as one of the “10 Must-See Films” at this top festival. Unesco invited the Directors to show their film and participate on panels on climate change at the Paris Climate Change talks this month at which negotiators from 195 countries passed the landmark climate accord. "The new accord is a signal that the era of carbon reduction has arrived," Kramer said.