Learning to See: The World of Insects

The dull title of this amazing documentary doesn’t begin to do justice to the real story it tells. Back in the early 1990s, American psychiatrist Robert Oelman left the U.S. and moved to Colombia on little more than a whim. At age 52, Oelman survived the country’s drug cartel wars and a couple of muggings to establish a small compound in Cali, where he began photographing wildlife. Unhappy with the blurry results of his shots of hummingbirds, Oelman devoted himself to figuring out how to capture beautiful images of all kinds of Amazon rainforest critters. After mastering the technical side, he turned his attention to the region’s insect world, going deeper and deeper into the rainforest spread over Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador to find obscure species. With his trusty assistant Christian Lopez, Oelman—over years of travel with oodles of patience—caught remarkably sharp, close-up shots of thousands of insects, some previously unknown. This film devotes a generous amount of time to Oelman’s historic transition to Colombia, and to his adventures trekking deep into an Amazon forest under constant threat from illegal logging and clearing. Oelman laments these shortsighted, venal practices that are decimating animal (and insect) species, comparing such shortsightedness to removing bricks from a collapsing wall. Directed by Oelman’s son, Jake Oelman, Learning to See gives the viewer a sense of investment in the photographer’s work, as the elder Oelman and Lopez endure hardships to create a visual record of the remarkable variety of insects in the massive Amazonian world. Extras include additional scenes, a "making-of" featurette, the music video "All of It," and panoramics and slides. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)