Absorbing climate-activism documentary ‘Just Do It’ premiered at the Green Movie Days film festival in Brussels last night. Friends of the Earth Europe hosted the screening and we were lucky enough to have the presence of the director, Emily James, who introduced the film and took part in a discussion with the audience afterwards.
We met with Emily after the screening to talk about the film, her inspiration, the role of documentaries in the environmental struggle, and about meeting people prepared to put themselves at risk for what they think is right.
Film-maker Emily James spent much of 2009 embedded in UK-based grassroots direct action groups, such as Plane Stupid and Climate Camp, documenting their secretive activities. The cameras followed the whole story of not just the actions, but the people themselves who are taking on governments and corporations to fight climate change. They storm coal-fired power stations, occupy airport runways and use their bodies to blockade banks, all in the face of arrest.
The result of this labour of love is an audacious, bright film that tells the story of people standing up for what they believe, and is also a testament to the power of the individual and community in struggle against the injustices of the modern world.
The project also resisted traditional film production models and was made possible through crowd funding and with the help of over 100 volunteers.
‘Just Do It’ is Emily’s feature debut. She has previously won international awards for her experimental and satirical television and documentary work. Emily is currently documenting the story of Polly Higgins, a UK- based lawyer who is working through the UN process to try to get Ecocide recognised as an international crime.
Can you talk about the birth of the idea behind ‘Just Do It’?
In 2008 I filmed Plane Stupid going into, occupying, and shutting down the runway at Stansted Airport.
I facilitated the distribution of the tapes to major broadcasters and it was all over the news for 24 hours. Then the mainstream news cycle moved on, and it was gone.
So I suggested to Plane Stupid that if we were to document the run up to an action and the planning and preparation, I would be able to make a film that had much more depth, longevity and took a deeper message to people.
They said absolutely no way; they were quite rightly concerned about their legal safety because potentially the footage could be used against them in court. But I persevered: I went away and did a huge amount of homework and had discussions with both activists and legal advisors and worked out a way to do it that would be safe for them.
What place do you think documentary and filmmaking has as a tool for social change?
Documentary is very good at opening a window into another world that the audience doesn’t necessarily have access to and in doing so it builds empathy with those people.
In the case of ‘Just Do It’ we were able to give an insight into a community which is quite frequently misrepresented in the news, or presented in a very paper thin way, with no real depth. We could provide a portrait that was much more accurate and nuanced and didn’t have the political agenda of attacking the people who were in the film.
In that sense documentary can – by sharing the stories of one group with other groups – cross-fertilise and inspire and hopefully encourage others to be as bold and as strong as the people in the film.
The film finishes in spring 2010, since then we’ve seen Occupy, the student protests in the UK, the Indignados in Spain and now the austerity measures that are being rolled out in many countries across Europe. What do you think this new context means for the environment movement?
What’s interesting is that Climate Camp used to try very hard to get people to draw connections between the economic system, the capitalist system, and climate change and the environment, and it was very difficult to engage people in a discussion about the banking industry.
Since the economic meltdown it’s become very easy to engage people in the wider picture dialogue, and to get them to see that actually all these issues are very connected to each other and that we can’t address one without addressing the bigger picture.
So, while it may look like people aren’t campaigning on climate as much as they were a few years ago, for the people involved it’s never been a this or that kind of thing, it’s always been a coherent struggle to bring systemic change, rather than single issue campaigning.
photo: Mini Mouse
Do you know of any examples of when people have taken ‘Just Do It’ inspired actions?
One woman came to a screening to tell me that she was significantly involved in the anti-fracking direct action movement as a direct result of having watched the film, which was really gratifying, and quite a few others have told me they’ve gotten involved in taking action after seeing the film.
I’ve had quite a lot of people tell me that they used to be involved, and after having gone through a period of disillusionment, then seeing the film, they decided to get re- involved. That is an extra bonus which I’d never really aimed for.
How can people get involved / use your film?
We definitely encourage people to organise screenings of the film to help inspire and engage people, and to start a dialogue about tactics and what they’re prepared to do.
The film seems to be incredibly effective in that way and we give a lot of support for that, so we extend that invitation to all of the local groups to host local screenings. Hopefully off the back of that people will rise up and start organising themselves and taking action.
Have your thoughts about the role of film in the fight against climate change changed after making ‘Just Do It’?
I’ve been engaged in this process of using film as a tool for social justice for quite a long time and I think if anything, it has solidified that and strengthened it for me. I was always a filmmaker first and have gradually used my filmmaking skills more and more towards social purpose ends and it seems to be the most effective thing that I can contribute.
The thing that was really amazing about making this film about really grassroots organisations, is that it has inspired me to encourage individuals to take action and to see the power of individuals, and the power of empowering individuals.
This word ’empowerment’ gets thrown around a lot, but when you’re looking at the individual in the grassroots, if even 20% of society took up that challenge, we would be in a fundamentally better place than we are now.
We leave it to the fringes, but we need to move radical ideas about the right of each individual to have a voice and a say over what they are doing into the middle. I’d always looked at politics and this kind of action as ‘civil disobedience’ in terms of how can we lobby the governments to do things differently.
As Paul says in the film, if we want the world to be a different place, we have to prefigure that change in the here and now, and be the change we want to see. To meet people who say: “I don’t care what the governments are doing, I’m gonna step in here and do what I think is right to do!” That is really exciting.
photo: Kristian Buus
title photo: Mini Mouse
