Vox Populi
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Video: Between Earth & Sky
Renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni studies “what grows back” after a disturbance in the rainforest canopy. In 2015, her rope snapped on a research climb, and she fell fifty feet from a tree and nearly died. After making a miraculous recovery, Nalini begins to explore a new research subject – herself.
BETWEEN EARTH & SKY follows Nalini as she prepares for another research climb in Monteverde, Costa Rica, before considering retirement from the field. In the process, she unearths the roots of other disturbances she faced throughout her life, as the daughter of mixed Indian-Jewish immigrant parents who prized high achievement and contribution above all else.
As a child, trees provided a place of solace and safety to Nalini, so much so that she swore an oath to protect them. Now, Nalini is doing the work of untangling the roots of her past and bringing family secrets to light, in order to understand how each impacted her life’s course. In an attempt to heal, she revisits the site of her fall on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, where her past, present, and future converge.
Running time: 25 minutes
a film by
ANDREW NADKARNI
featuring
NALINI NADKARNI
produced by
SWETHA REGUNATHAN
KATIE SCHILLER
executive producers
CAITLIN MAE BURKE
SU KIM
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One of my favorite quotes on the planet was uttered by the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” I make my students analyze this quote each semester, in preparation for writing their final paper, an op-ed on the intrinsic and many-faceted value inherent in just simply educating girls. It goes without saying that the world needs a million more Nalini’s. It’s my belief that only in such passion as she and so many others possess (and yet, as Gould points out, not near enough) can we truly change the world for the better.
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Well said, Matt. Thank you!
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There is a line, perhaps 3/4 way through where she talks about the state of the disturbed area never returning and compares it to her own life and whatever was wadded up in me let loose for just a second and I dared to think that through the illness and pain, and worse, the ability in this last few months to write m poetry, that maybe it will be different but somehow I may get back to climbing my trees. Thank you.
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An inspiring film about nature and recovery. What we lose and what we gain by injury.
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