The Singing Planet Film Review

A couple of weeks ago, I watched The Singing Planet, a documentary film by Liz McKenzie about the voices of the natural world. This is a highly simplified summary that doesn’t make it justice at all. I had the pleasure to review and write an article about it on earth.fm, which I am a curator of. I invite you to read the full article here and, most importantly, watch this beautiful portrait through the ears and eyes of Liz, Richard Nelson (cultural anthropologist and nature field recordist) and Hank Lenfter (writer and nature field recordist).

We started speaking about the world, about the mountain, about the weather, but we are no longer speaking so easily to the world and hearing the world speaking back to us.

David Abram

The Singing Planet is a documentary film the title of which is evocative enough to open doors of (re)discovery onto a world of sounds. Despite recently becoming bored with cinema, I gladly watched director Liz McKenzie’s beautiful film three times over. It’s deeply moving in a nurturing way, and evokes hope for action through the beauty it shows and its deep respect for all living things. 

It follows nature-sound recordists and authors Richard Nelson and Hank Lentfer “for an unforgettable immersion in these wild voices and the places that give rise to them”.