Vintage camera documentary brings the climate crisis to life

A nature documentary filmed on old style Super 8 cameras is being celebrated as a “love letter to nature” as it prepares for its Scottish premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival.

Shot by 40 camera operators across the globe, the film includes footage from Oban, the Isle of Lewis and Edinburgh, and critics say “rarely has the climate crisis been addressed with such warmth and heart.”

Entitle “Super Nature”, the documentary was filmed using vintage Super 8 cameras from the 1960s, with operators from 25 countries joining together to capture our natural world.

Among them is Edinburgh-based surfer and cinematographer Mike Guest, who was drawn to the project through its director, Ed Sayers.

Explaining the appeal of the Super 8 camera, Guest told STV News: “It’s a cartridge that once you press record, that’s it. You can’t rewind it and go back over like you could in a recording studio.

“It slows you down and makes you think a bit more and it’s just the look you get afterwards. It’s kind of magical – slightly slower frames and there’s a warmth to it when you get really good light.

“When you dive in and watch that and sit down in a cinema, I just hope people get lost in it and lost in the stories.”

The film portrays the fragile beauty of our environment balanced against the threat of the climate crisis, told through the stories of filmmakers in countries including Scotland, Kenya, Brazil and Iceland.

Director Sayers said: “The point is nobody would really travel very far, so we were engaging with people all over the world whether they had filmed with Super 8 before or not.

“We asked them to film stories close to them but also close to their heart. They then narrate their piece, so you meet 40 filmmakers in the film who are giving you that local love, but all over the world.”

Super Nature has its Scottish premiere in Glasgow on Saturday evening.