In this documentary short, Shaped on all Six Sides by Kat Gardiner, Andy Stewart shares his philosophies about his relationship with and respect for the craft of wooden boat carpentry. This quote on quality and his place in the work stood out:

A lot of the allure of working on wooden boats, actually, is because the sea is the final arbitrator of the quality of your work. It’s very gratifying to see repairs that I’ve done 30 years ago still holding up, and so I feel like I’m part of a long continuum of craftsman keeping vessels around and alive. 

It reminded me of the NYTimes article, The Stories That Bind Us, which lays out the benefits of children knowing their family history. Sharing traditions and values through storytelling can help to develop an “intergenerational self,” an understanding of their part in a family narrative that is built with both successes and difficult challenges. A good read…

Watch this incredible color footage of London in 1927. Filmed by Claude Frisse-Greene, a British filmmaker who was the son of inventor and cinematography pioneer William Friese-Greene, it showcases the cars, buses, boats, parks, monuments, signage, rhythms, style, and the sea of hats that made the London streets during the ’20s. 

More 1920s vids in the archives.

Thanks, @benjohnbarnes.

Marine scientist and Stanford PhD student Cassandra Brooks narrates a two month long time-lapse view from an ice breaker — a specially-designed ship with “a strengthened hull, an ice-clearing shape, and the power to push through sea ice.”

Cassandra joined the Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, to track the phytoplankton bloom and study organic carbon in the waters as the seasons shift from summer to autumn. She’s also exploring the balance between the region’s fishing industry — Antarctic toothfish are caught here and later sold on the market as “Chilean sea bass” — with the conservation of this remote and celebrated ecosystem for scientific study.

via National Geographic’s Ocean Views.

More videos from Antarctica are in the archives. 

Two South African filmmakers and ecologists travel to South Georgia Island and Antarctica to film the animals that live on the seventh continent. In this episode from EarthTouch.tv, meet the trusting seals and penguins they find in this beautiful place that has no major land predators. 

You can watch Earth Touch’s entire Antarctica series here. There’s also more Antarctica in the archives.

via Climate Adaptation.

Ships in bottles. Storytelling. Bottled History. We loved this one: 

Ray Gascoigne has been around boats his whole life, as a shipwright, a merchant sailor, and now as a ship builder on the smallest dry dock there is: a bottle. This short film, by Smith Journal and Melbourne-based production studio Commoner, picks through the wood chips to tell the story of a craft honed over 60 years, and the man behind it…

Related watching: An interview with Irving Harper.

via Boing Boing.