Resources & The Environment
This little sphere, the only home we’ve ever known, our amazing blue marble in the vast expanse of space, so beautiful, so plentiful and so precious, has physical limits that humanity is testing to the max. The stories below are all about the issues that arise from our extraction and use natural resources.
“Blood Coal”
Pax, Netherlands ~1,5 min
‘Clean coal’ doesn’t exist, but some coal is even dirtier
Pax was looking for a simple and immersive way to communicate the problem of blood coal in a clear and human way. I wrote, produced and directed the short film below to explain the concept of ‘blood coal’ to a broad audience.
‘Blood Coal’ was released in seven languages
“Losing Nemo” ~7min
Sounding the alarm on the severe effects of global overfishing through a cinematic animation
Some stories are so big, they are hard to wrap your mind around. Some numbers so large they don’t really mean anything. ‘Losing Nemo’ was an attempt to make the scale and effects of overfishing almost tangible and to try and create an emotional connection with fish, who have no facial expression and aren’t able to scream for help.
‘Losing Nemo’ won the animation award from the San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival and was released in English, German, Spanish and Cantonese.
“Coal Exit”
Urgewalt, Germany ~2,5min
Coal is no longer a viable energy source so it’s essential that as many companies as possible divest
Urgewald was looking for a way to promote their coalexit.org project that informs companies and organisations so they can make sure to not invest direct or indirectly into any company that somehow contributes to keeping the coal industry alive, despite the severe ecological impacts of coal as a source of energy.
Moritz Schröder-Therre, communications director of Urgewald about the collaboration:
"Douwe is a great creative guide. He digs deep into his projects and soon creates an understanding for his customers' character and aims. A proof is the animated film he produced for our project coalexit.org. I recommend to consult Douwe for animated storytelling especially for social and environmental topics."
“The Price of Gas”
Both Ends, Netherlands ~2min
Gas is often seen as a ‘sustainable’ energy source, but it really?
The Netherlands is a small, but very densely populated country that is increasingly dependent on Russian gas. The film below now only aim to explain the risks of that dependence, but also to the myth of gas as the go-to ‘sustainable’ energy source as it emits carbon dioxide and is a non-renewable source.