Inhabiting the inhospitable

Ask yourself what proportion of time in your life have you been walking on asphalt and what proportion of time have you been treading a green or sandy ground. If you think you’ve spent more time walking on asphalt, you should probably watch Human Planet.

Announced in 2007 and first released on TV last 2011, this 8-part television documentary series was produced by the BBC with co-production from Discovery and BBC Worldwide. It won 2 BAFTA Television Craft awards among 7 nominations.

Human Planet basically shows how still today some people are really connected to nature conditions to survive. To demonstrate that, the production teams based at the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol and BBC Wales recorded 70 stories around inhospitable lands of 40 countries in which humans still inhabit.

All the material was divided following a criterion of environment type. That means each of the eight chapters are recorded in different places on Earth, but the life of people living in those locations depends extremely on one of these topics: oceans, deserts, arctic, jungles, mountains, grasslands, rivers and cities. You might be surprised there’s a ‘cities’ episode: its function is to create a contrast with the seven chapters that precede it.

The stunning quality of the recording, accompanied by the photography work of Timothy Allen, is not all the impression that remains after watching them. The series has an anthropological message that makes you wonder not only why do these group of people still exist and why nature is inherent to their habits and culture, but also why we are not that connected to nature anymore, why our current society mistreats, ignores and overexploits it the way it does, if the basic vital functions of any human in the planet depend on it, and that includes us.

Marina Hernández