Wild Hope
The Project
Antarctica belongs to no one, and so to all of us. The wildest ground left, the furthest from any of us, a white edge of the map most people will only ever imagine, and the one place we have agreed to keep that way.
A century ago the whaling fleets nearly emptied these waters. The great whales are returning now, into a sea that is warming again.
Wild Hope is an attempt to bring it close, in stills and film, to make somewhere almost none of us will ever stand feel like it is ours.
That is our wild hope.
Wild Hope - The film
Wild Hope is a six-minute film about Antarctica. About what we took from the Southern Ocean during the industrial whaling era, and the recovery now underway in the same waters. By the 1950s the blue and humpback whales of the south had been reduced to two or three percent of their former numbers. Today the great whales are returning, drawn back to the vast clouds of krill that feed the entire system. The film follows that arc from loss to return, and asks what it means that the wild can recover at all, if we give it the space. Released on World Oceans Day. Directed, filmed and narrated by Matt Sharp. Part of Wild Hope, an ongoing project documenting the Antarctic Peninsula across stills, film and exhibition.
