A local filmmaker received the Audience Award at the Anchorage International Film Festival last weekend. Director Luke Tergis splits his time between Haines and California and said the honor was unexpected. He described being out for dinner with a collaborator when his phone lit up with messages. He ran to the venue and received the award to the crowd’s applause.
Tergis’s first movie, called Smoking Fish, was centered around Haines and Klukwan. The new documentary is called Pleistocene Park.
“It’s about a Russian scientist in the most remote corner of Siberia, who is trying to recreate the arctic mammoth steppe ecosystem. He lives north of the arctic circle in a place that’s a five and a half hour flight from the nearest town you fly into. And he thinks that recreating that ecosystem which largely involves reintroducing animals that once lived in the arctic can prevent a catastrophic global warming feedback loop.”
The movie took nine years to complete, and eight trips to Siberia.
“I was really excited that we got into Anchorage International because all these issues that are facing Siberia the exact same issues apply to Alaska. And it’s important to present these stories to Alaskan audiences,” said Tergis
The story revolves around Scientist Serguei Zimov, who became famous for quantifying the amount of carbon stored in permafrost. That amount is twice that in the atmosphere. Melting permafrost releases those greenhouse gasses, leading to more heat trapped in the atmosphere, more melting, more releases, and on and on.
Zimov theorizes that bringing large herbivores to the arctic will mitigate this feedback loop. In the winter the animals would tamp down the insulative snow layer, exposing the soil to a deeper freeze. And browsing would shift the vegetation from forests to grassy plains, which are known to sequester more carbon. In the spring snow-covered grasses would soak up less heat than the dark-colored trees.
Zimov started importing herd animals to his corner of Siberia to test his ideas. He has bison and musk oxen in a fenced area and has been tracking soil temperatures.
In the movie, Tergis accompanies one of the animal shipments.
“We started in Denmark and we drove through twelve time zones with a semi-truck and a shipping container full of bison to the end of the last dirt road in Asia. And then from there loaded on a barge and spent another week going down the Kolyma river going to the arctic with these animals. And they all survived the trip.” said Tergis
The movie has been featured at festivals around Europe and America, and a showing in Haines is being discussed. Working on such a long project has been life-changing for Tergis. He met his wife while traveling for the film and they’ve started a family, raising a now two-year-old daughter.
Her middle name is Siberia.
