Timed to coincide with the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival join institutions around the nation in screening Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. 

A stunning sensory experience and cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is a years-in-the-making feature documentary from the award-winning team behind Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013) and narrated by Alicia Vikander.

The film follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group who, after nearly 10 years of research, argue that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century as a result of profound and lasting human changes to the Earth.

From concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60% of the mainland coast, to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, to psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s Ural Mountains, to metal festivals in the closed city of Norilsk, to the devastated Great Barrier Reef in Australia and massive marble quarries in Carrara, the filmmakers have traversed the globe using state-of-the-art camera techniques to document the evidence and experience of human planetary domination. Check out the trailer!

Stay after the screening for a discussion and audience Q&A with experts from Drexel University and the Academy of Natural Sciences, Scott Knowles (PhD, Head, Department of History, Drexel University, and urban disaster expert) and Stefanie Kroll (PhD, Watershed Ecology Section Lead, Academy of Natural Sciences). Moderated by Maiken Scott, host of WHYY’s The Pulse.

Wednesday, September 25, 7 p.m.
$15 Public
$12 Academy Members

Click here to purchase tickets.

Presenting Sponsors:
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University and Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival
Co-Presenter: WHYY/ Pulse