Climate action on the big screen

Sabrina Caires

5th November 2021

From net zero and climate pledges to a tiff between Scott Morisson and Emmanuel Macron, news sites have been plastered with headlines about the G20 and Cop26 summits over the past few weeks. The Environmental Film Festival Australia (EFFA) gives audiences a perspective on climate action that is more personal than political – one of shared climate anxiety and community empowerment.

“It's an opportunity to really understand the headlines without necessarily having to overwhelm yourself with it, because you get really intimate stories and a way to connect with those issues on a more personal level,” said Freyja Gillard, the festival’s co-director.

Ms Gillard believes this year’s theme, ‘take a journey’, is timely.

“It's really trying to create a space for people to explore the world and take a journey from their couches across the world, and just really connect with the planet again.”

Catering to a wide audience, the program spans from animated films geared towards kids, to straight documentaries, to an absurdist period comedy.

One of the festival’s goals is to present climate change as a current reality, rather than the distant threat it’s often painted as.

Ms Gillard says the short films in particular illustrate a sense of currency.

“There's so many Indigenous communities and small communities that are just really being impacted right now.”

‘The Forum’, directed by Marcus Vetter, is a personal recommendation of Ms Gillard’s – a 2019 feature about the World Economic Forum, which she notes, “sounds really boring… but it’s actually kind of like this political drama, and seeing how that other half lives.”

However, the majority of the films encourage audiences to look beyond the political leaders in their news feeds for answers on climate change, instead turning to those with a knowledge of, and connection to, the land.

“You've got big political leaders that need to make change – absolutely. But also getting to hear from Indigenous elders and how they Care for Country, and how actually maybe we could connect with the land.”

EFFA’s short film package ‘Elders & the Earth’ is one such instance of vocalising Indigenous voices who are suffering for, and at the hands of, the changing earth. Just a few of the stories available to stream include the displacement of a NSW community due to a draining river, a man who’s spent 50 years planting a million trees, and Peruvian elders fighting to protect crucial eco-reserves.

Wurundjeri elder Aunty Di Kerr gave a Welcome to Country on October 14 during the live streamed opening night, where she emphasised the urgency of climate action.

“You know, I worry about Mother Earth. We believe that the Earth is our Mother, the streams and creeks being her veins. And they are clogging up. We’re having a lot of different weather cycles which I think is to do with climate change as well, and it’s also Mother Earth getting a little bit angry because we’ve forgotten her,” said Aunty Di Kerr.

‘The Weather Diaries’, a 2020 documentary directed by Kathy Drayton, was chosen as the opening night film. Ms Gillard explains that this film operates on a “dual level”.

“One, motherhood and bringing somebody into a world that you're really worried about and seeing your leaders not doing enough… and on the flip side of that, also Kathy's child Imogen, they were growing up. And so it's that looking at climate anxiety from that youth context and what it means to be growing up and having some success and working out who you are in a world literally on fire.”

The documentary has been long in the making. During an online Q&A, Ms Drayton said it came about at a time when she felt silenced.

“I’d also been talking to people about making a climate documentary and the response I kept getting was there’s no market for films about climate change. In that Tony Abbott climate, nobody wanted to talk about climate change either.”

But years later, as the documentary is finally screened, climate action is the topic on everyone’s mind.

The festival’s haunting yet urgent message is echoed in Ms Drayton’s words in her documentary ‘The Weather Diaries’.

“Perhaps we’ll be the first species to record its own extinction, and that will be our most remarkable achievement.”

EFFA’s 2021 program will run online from October 14 to November 14 2021.