Super Nature
Ed Sayers, In UK cinemas in 2026
Ed Sayers, a director of commercials and music videos, has a passion for Super 8, a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak. He鈥檚 not alone: the dinky film cassettes survive because of the advocacy of a small global community of film-makers.
What marks Sayers out is his organisational ability. His first feature, Super Nature, which premiered at the London Film Festival last month, assembles Super 8 footage from 25 countries shot by 40 film-makers and local enthusiasts who captured the natural world near where they live.
Advertisement
When I read the premise of this movie, I will admit I was buckling in for 82 minutes of sparrows and house cats, but boy was I wrong.
While the film鈥檚 distributor BFI is making much of its 鈥済reen鈥� credentials, what with it being a globe-spanning documentary that racked up precisely zero air miles, worthiness is a poor sales pitch. Better, surely, to emphasise how strange everything looks in this handheld, lo-fi format.
Super 8, says Sayers in voiceover, looks as though 鈥渟omeone had painted your memories for you鈥�. The literal truth of this becomes apparent as you settle into the medium鈥檚 glare, flare, shakiness and shifts of hue and tone. The Super 8 world is closer to the one we see: it isn鈥檛 polished, posed, well-lit or even perfectly focused, but nor is the world.
Among many charming moments in the film is the observation that puffins 'have the kindest eyes'
Yet it is often devastatingly beautiful, and so is this film. A few of the more ambitious shots featuring the smallest, fastest, most retiring creatures are hard to make out. But an animal isn鈥檛 lesser because we only glimpsed it. The one sequence that didn鈥檛 work for me was of migrating geese. While beautifully shot and edited, the set-up (microlights and two cameras) was too ingenious, too 鈥渟taged鈥�. Better to lie in a puddle in the rain with a plastic bag over your head, filming a snail.
Big-budget nature film-making takes the diametrically opposite approach, revealing the world as the eye cannot possibly see it (or as it may not exist). The impulse to reveal new worlds is admirable 鈥揳nd I maintain that Walking With Dinosaurs is a joy 鈥� but I can鈥檛 help wonder if viewers, drunk on perfectly lit, framed and timed marvels, wouldn鈥檛 become jaded.
Super Nature shakes things up wonderfully. Structurally, it is built around the story of its making. Accompanying every sequence (of flamingoes, worms, coral and more) is each film-maker鈥檚 voice, explaining what the footage means to them. Among many charming moments is the description of the sound puffins make as they run (clownish, as though they were wearing outsize slippers) and the observation that 鈥渢hey have the kindest eyes鈥�.
The testaments can be inspiring: some film-makers took to Super 8 because they needed a new way to see the world after misfortune had shrunk their lives to a point. Others trot out green pieties; a few should stick their heads under a cold-water tap (in ibex you can, apparently, see the wisdom of the mountains).
Then there is Sayers鈥檚 own story. Act one: the director has a grand ambition 鈥� to record the natural world, using vintage tech and local film-makers. Act two: the director loses hope, editing footage of floods, fires, Ukrainian trenches and plastic garbage. Act three: the director is cheered and the project redeemed by a seal鈥檚 playful antics.
It鈥檚 as good a narrative frame as any, but perfectly predictable, in a way the footage never is.
Simon also 谤别肠辞尘尘别苍诲蝉鈥�
Film
Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle
Though not the first to show聽the ocean depths in聽colour, Cousteau and Malle鈥檚聽1956 documentary changed our view of two-thirds of the planet.
TV
Tim Haines
This six-part BBC documentary from 1999 (rebooted in 2025) brought scientific rigour to its unashamedly dramatic depictions of聽the聽Mesozoic Era.
