The BAFTA-winning British director Brian Hill’s documentary Climate of Change premiered on Thursday, April 22, 2010, at the second night of the Tribeca Film Festival. Narrated by Oscar-award winner Tilda Swinton, the uplifting documentary focuses on how ordinary people can make a difference and features a diverse, thoughtful group of environmental activists who each champion a cause close to their heart, from regulating mountain top removal mining to de-forestation.
Complimenting the amazing cinematography, the characters Hill introduces provide a range of experience and perspective in tackling our generation’s biggest challenge. We visit the tropical rain forests of Papua, New Guinea, where Sep Galeva protects his piece of the rain forest by practicing sustainable logging in part because “The forest is supermarket because I get everything from there.” We also visit Togo, where Sena Alouka educates locals about building environmentally sound, cost-effective products like solar cookers and young students on the importance of planting trees. With a critical eye towards the coal mining industry in West Virginia, we meet Judy Bond of Cold Mountain River Watch and Larry Gibson, who refuses to sell his seventh generation family property to strip miners. Gibson remarks that if people can see he isn’t scared, they “can see they can make better choices themselves.” The film also introduces us to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seedbank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen, the northern most community on the planet. The facility was established to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds from locations worldwide in an underground cavern. Interwoven into the film are scene stealing, precocious Indian students who have started a student youth group.
Following the screening, American Express organized a panel discussion that included actress Jessica Alba, the honorary co-chair of 1Goal; Chris Gebhardt, who runs Participant Film’s Take Part initiative; Director of Climate of Change Brian Hill; and distinguished photographer Sebastian Copeland, whose film Into the Cold is premiered at the Festival on Saturday night. Journalist and moderator Perri Peltz invited director Hill to speak about his film’s more hopeful tone, which he explained was a response to the environmental films that have “apocalyptic tendencies” that can overwhelm. As Hill hoped, Climate of Change is a nice departure from the traditional doomsday scenario and gives its audience a sense of why this ship still has a chance to right its course.
