REVIEW OF MY OCTOPUS TEACHER Directors: Pippa Ehrlich & James Reed Starring: Craig Foster as himself
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RAIG FOSTER, South African filmmaker and founder of the Sea Change Project finds himself at a life crossroads physically and emotionally
burnt out from overwork. Thereupon, an unassuming and unpretentious hero’s journey unfolds as the free diver Foster encounters by chance an octopus and over a year of daily visitations to the same opulent kelp forest just off shore of South Africa’s wild west coast, Foster and the octopus develop an unlikely and tender relationship, a bond, as it were, between species. At first or even second viewing, Foster’s lovely and touching film My Octopus Teacher is hardly a ‘futures’ film. But apart from its obvious technical qualities - exquisite camera operation and editing, or its aesthetic qualities of luscious underwater-vistas of kelp forests, exuberant otherworldly colour schemes of coral formations and sea-life, and breathtaking scenery of the rugged Simonstown coastline, there is much for futurists to take home and apply to Futures Studies. My Octopus Teacher throws up various provocations and ideas in the viewer: Firstly, the viewer finds him/ herself asking who is teaching who, how is that things are learnt, and what are the outcomes of this kind of vicarious in-nature learning. Secondly, the Futurist may question the current nature and future possibilities of humankind’s relationships with other species and to what extent should we interfere with the instinctual behaviours of other species as witnessed by Foster who stands by as the pyjama shark attacks the octopus of his affections? We also find ourselves questioning the future roles of humans ‘inside of nature’ – to use Foster’s insightful phrase, in an increasingly compromised global environment, a wicked problem of such enormity that many young retreat from, in the ignorant solace of an ultra-digitized world.
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HUMAN FUTURES
Film Review By David Lindsay-Wright
