Under The Big Cloud

James Buffin's film "Under The Big Cloud" is not your everyday project. A "poetic odyssey", this is a tale of nature's fury and man's strength. But most of all perhaps, it is about grief, loss, and how these shape a man's entire existence.

What seems like a very personal journey for one man becomes an exploration of the soul for all mankind. James Buffin takes the audience from otherworldly disasters to places forever affected by them. He shows us sights that seem to be ripped from fairy tales, places that are frozen in time that still retain their beauty even after the ravages of nature. All of this comes together beautifully to weave a tale about how trauma can shape not just one life, but all life.

Under the Big Cloud was started in 2009 as three different projects. The first one was with the Chasing4Life  storm chase team in and a series of coincidences led to two trips to Samoa, shooting with survivors of a tsunami. James then travelled as a volunteer to help them tell their own stories. Indonesia was April-May this year. But it wasn't until James covered the Toronto International Film Festival a magazine earlier this year magazine that he realized all three projects belonged together.

We bring James to the radio show to share how he went from filmmaker to the subject of his own film and to answer the question everyone keeps asking: "What happened to the Chasing4Life movie?"