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Environmental Cinema: A Balance of Art and Activismby Danielle Wong
Toronto, November 7 2007
| | | | Environmental filmmakers from all over the world struggled with the same question on Friday, Oct. 26th: where do you draw the line between being an activist and being a director? “There are too many environmental films you go and watch and your heart sinks and you get depressed, and then it sort of goes away,” Canadian director Robert Alstead (You Never Bike Alone) said during Friday’s activist cinema roundtable at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. Alstead and 30 other filmmakers whose films were screened at the eighth annual Planet in Focus International Film and Video Festival met Friday to discuss the challenges of making an activist film. Mark Harvey’s film, Land Out of Time, talks about land in the American Rockies being exploited for energy supply. He said his challenge was in the temptation to demonize the petroleum industry. “The irony was that our studio was lit up by the natural gas from the same place…my house was fueled by this stuff,” Harvey said. “The story became: who’s the real demon?”Harvey soon found that it was the administration or regulators in the government who were at fault. “If you always demonize the industry, it almost becomes adolescent,” he said. “We need to look into the systemic institution.” Alstead said that he tried to take a balanced approach in his film about cycling activism. “I think balance is more (effective) than propaganda.”But Angus MacQueen, director of Cocaine- Viva La Coca, said that even balance isn’t enough. “We take one side and the other side and we put them against each other without empowering, and that makes the audience angry,” MacQueen said. “We drive the car, we buy the oil…but nobody really runs the camera back on the audience,” he said. “And that’s the problem with populist cinema.” This audience-reflective genre of film is where MacQueen said he’d like to see activist video mature to. “It’s less entertaining, but if we want to solve problems that’s where we need to take it.” The Planet in Focus festival ran from Oct. 24 to the 28th. The spotlight this year was “Polar Visions,” as this year marks the 125th anniversary of International Polar Year. Spotlighted films were about the circumpolar regions of the Arctic and the Antarctic, and themes surrounding atmosphere, ice, land and oceans.Related films include The Prize of the Pole (Staffen Juelen), Arctic Son (Andrew Walton) and Thin Ice: Sattuq (Lauren O’Grady and George Browne). The festival’s aim was to raise awareness co-programmer Karilynn Ming Ho said. “(The festival) is not only timely, it’s necessary,” she said. “There’s true concern about the environment and now lots of filmmakers want to cover it.” There were a total of 84 films and videos screened at the festival that were selected from over 400 submissions. “We try to have a balance,” festival co-programmer Kirk Cooper said. “We want to entertain you as well.” That’s why the festival takes all sorts of genres of videos or films from activists.And an activist, director Deanna Ford said, is anyone who has an opinion and says something. “Activists are really reactivists,” she said. “We see something we don’t like and we act…We don’t stand in front of a tree unless someone’s going to tear it down.”Ford’s documentary, What’s All the Flap About?, talks about the Fatal Light Program’s efforts to prevent migratory birds from hitting Toronto windows. When something threatens what’s close to you, you can suddenly become an activist, Ford said. “I’d like to let people know that we’re all the same. We can all be activists at any given moment.” Visit www.planetinfocus.org for information on year-round screenings of these important films as well as archives of past festivals' screenings. | | |
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