As part of THE NFB IN LIBRARIES programming, the Saint John Free Public Library will present Incandescence.

Incandescence | directed by Nova Ami & Velcrow Ripper |  2024 |104 min.

Every summer, wildfires increasingly ravage places around the globe, darkening the skies with thick smoke and reducing communities to little more than ash and debris. Award-winning directors Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper weave together immersive on-the-ground footage with first-person accounts from Indigenous Elders, first responders, and ordinary people forced to react to a rapidly evolving ecosystem. As climate change continues to escalate, full suppression measures have largely failed, leading to bigger, more intense mega-fires. But there is another way. Indigenous knowledge keepers explain that the First Nations people traditionally used controlled burns to regenerate the land. Honouring the experience of both human and non-human inhabitants, the film transforms our understanding of fire from destruction and disaster into a kind of profound illumination, lighting the way towards new life and hope.

INCANDESCENCE | Official Trailer | National Film Board of Canada