The Earth is Man’s Home was a unique vertical film installation created for the Man the Explorer theme pavilion (within the Man, His Planet and Space subsection). The film was produced, directed and edited by American filmmaker/designers, Nick and Ann Chaparos, a husband-and-wife team who developed the concept for the project in 1965 for the Institute of Design, University of Waterloo (Canada), through their company Chaparos Productions Limited. The film was originally shot in 35mm colour and B/W, and integrated found footage including 16mm and still photographs, amounting to approximately 500 images in all. Following shooting, the storyline was written by Phillip Hersch, then author of the Canadian TV series Wojeck (1966–8), highlighting the entangled relation between humans and the environment, featuring the complexity and beauty of the planet. The final screen format incorporated three distinct, contrasting images stacked vertically within a single 70mm frame, and were also harmonized to

compose single monumental images, amongst them, a newly born baby, a rocket launch, and an atomic bomb explosion. The images were accompanied by a lively soundtrack of voices, music and wild sound recorded on location and eventually composed by sound technician, Brian Avery. Songs include Yellow Bird performed by Jeanne d’arc de Sampaio in Brazil, Dominique performed by Soeur Sourire (the Belgian singing nun), and The Wanderers.

A detailed account and timeline of production, filming and sound recording in Canada, Peru, Brazil, England, France and the U.S. is described in Nick Chaparos’s 1967 article in American Cinematographer. The film is a brilliant example of 1960’s humanist environmentalist filmmaking that resonates today and echoes Labyrinth and Polar Life that all demonstrated restraint and a remarkable understanding of the spectatorial experience of these experimental viewing formats. Writing in one of the more extended critical accounts of the film in the Journal of the SMPTE in 1968, composer Frank Lewin effusively described The Earth is Man’s Home as “one of the most moving films ever produced.”