FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST is an entertaining film with a strong political point of view. The animated treatise against deforestation uses colorful characters and humor to teach children about caring for the earth.
The film’s scary depiction of the evils of industry seems strangely timely and of the past. Children’s films nowadays rarely take such a hard moral stance, favoring instead to deal with issues of identity and belonging (think Disney’s INSIDE OUT, or the DreamWorks picture HOME). With the exception of 2008’s WALL-E, recent animated films for children dismiss the idea that children already belong to something important — they are part of a larger ecosystem. And children, like adults, have a responsibility to maintain our planet.
Since FERNGULLY’s release, the estimated remaining forest cover in Brazil has decreased about 9 percent. That translates to more than 30,000 square kilometers, making the issues in the film particularly pressing today. The urgency with which the film treats this matter harkens back to a time when the environment was a tangible public good and its value was not up for debate.
The film premiered in April 1992, three months before countries joined together to create the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty that set forth a blueprint for combating global climate change. FERNGULLY was in touch with the global conversation on climate and the environment and made that conversation accessible for kids.
It is interesting to think what a film like FERNGULLY might look like if it translated contemporary views on the environment into animated form. If that film comes, the optimistic world of FERNGULLY will be even more welcome.
— Diana Martinez, Film Streams Education Director
