Each summer for more than half a century, the US ecologist and biologist David Inouye has returned to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado. Working out of a small cabin, he examines how life is persisting and changing in the high-altitude mountain meadow, focusing on the relationship between wildflowers and hummingbirds. As To Know a Place details, this pilgrimage has become a family affair, with his son Brian and granddaughter Miyoko joining the annual excursion to help measure, count, observe and share how time and climate are shaping life in the meadow. The Colorado-based director Brendan Young’s documentary is a stirring portrait of both place and family. Capturing the sweeping beauty of the region, the film explores why the often-exciting, ever-evolving and always-humbling business of understanding how life works on even a small slice of Earth is a ceaseless pursuit.
Director: Brendan Young
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Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
10 minutes
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Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes
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Physics
Groundbreaking visualisations show how the world of the nucleus gives rise to our own
10 minutes
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War and peace
‘She is living on in many hearts’ – Otto Frank on the legacy of his daughter’s diary
12 minutes
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Art
Why Diego Velázquez needed a lifetime to paint his enigmatic masterpiece
31 minutes
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Earth science and climate
There’s a ‘climate bomb’ ticking beneath the Arctic ice. How can we prepare?
8 minutes
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Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes
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Physics
To change the way you see the Moon, view it from the Sun’s perspective
5 minutes