Gandhi film maker previews Oceans movie at TED

Seascape After Sunset from Wikimedia Commons.

The producer of Gandhi, Chariots of Fire and Dances with Wolves wants to create an emotional bond between people and our planet’s threatened seas and is spending millions to film oceanic life.

Oceans, a project of blockbuster Canadian producer Jake Eberts and fellow film-maker Jacques Perrin of France, will have its American opening on Earth Day, about April 22, 2010, following an October premiere in France.

Eberts presented a nine-minute clip of the movie Wednesday at the TED 2009 conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) currently underway in Long Beach, Calif. Ethan Zuckerman, blogging from the conference, described the clip as “an impressionistic portrait of the world’s oceans, with footage shot on, above and under water.” Sponsors and foundations have contributed to the $75 million spent so far, he said.

Oceans sounds like a film that stargazers and people who love our planet will want to see. Just as emphatically, its makers sound like they were born under astrological water signs, the signs most concerned with emotional bonds.

As it happens, film-makers Perrin and Eberts were born three days apart in mid-July, 1941, under a Cancer sun. Perrin was born in Paris and Eberts in Quebec. Cancer is an emotional water sign ruled by the moon, which moves the tides. The sign is also strongly associated with nurturing of a motherly sort because of its association with the moon.

A film promoting an emotional bond with the ocean in hopes that people will take better care of Mother Earth is quite a nice illustration of the central symbolism of Cancer.

To top it off, Perrin was born when the moon was in Pisces, doubling the influence of water signs in his nature. Pisces, represented by the fishes, is the water sign ruled by Neptune, the planet named for the sea-god.

Ebert’s natal moon is in Aquarius, an individualistic yet community-focused air sign. The influence of his Aquarian moon shows up in the themes of his movies, like Gandhi, Chariots of Fire and Dances with Wolves, but also in the ways people tend to describe the movies he has made. As Zuckerman reports, “Eberts has a reputation for making films that no one else would or could make.”

If an emotionally moving film about the ocean can be made, I expect these two will manage to do it.