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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Nature and landscape
‘A culture is no better than its woods’ – what our trees reveal about us, by W H Auden
5 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
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Biology
‘Save the parasites’ may not be a popular rallying cry – but it could be a vital one
11 minutes
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Evolution
The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo
6 minutes
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Biology
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short
3 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes