Changing climate and Moving images

Winning the Oscar for the best documentary feature would certainly enhance the appeal and outreach for An Inconvenient Truth. It should also strengthen the formidable mission that Al Gore has embarked on: to educate everyone that human-induced climate change is for real.

"It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly, and wisely," says the former US Vice President introducing his film, produced for less than a million dollars – small change in Hollywood terms.

While the political stature of its ‘star’ -- and now, the Oscar – takes this film to a league of its own, it’s not the only global documentary about this important topic. In recent years, a number of factual and make-belief films have been made with climate change as their principal theme.

No wonder Hollywood is attracted to this subject – it offers the ultimate planetary disaster, even if it unfolds slowly over decades. That’s not a major constraint in the land of make-belief: in The Day After Tomorrow (2004), director Roland Emmerich just accelerated natural climatic processes to happen within weeks – with dramatic results for his story (and box office).

It may be convenient to take such liberties with the truth in fiction, but delivering factual and credible content involves bigger challenges. That requires balancing facts, opinions and interpretations while engaging today’s easily distracted audiences. The task becomes harder when the subject is as technical as climate change.

An Inconvenient Truth has achieved this difficult balance remarkably well – as has
The Great Warming, a compelling, Canadian-made documentary also released in 2006. The latter has its own star appeal: narrated by actors Alanis Morissette and Keanu Reeves, it reveals how a changing climate is affecting the lives of people everywhere.  Using breathtaking visuals filmed in eight countries on three continents, this production ‘taps into the growing groundswell of public interest in this topic to present an emotional, accurate picture of our children's planet’.

‘Our children’s planet’ – a simple yet powerful phrase that never failsto move sensible and sensitivepeople. It’s precisely that kind of appeal to our hearts and emotions that many climate change (and indeed, environmental) documentaries lack.

With ‘moving images moving people’ as our slogan, we at TVE Asia Pacific certainly believe in the power of compelling, well-made films to reach out to people’s hearts and minds. We don’t cover wildlife; our focus is on life itself going wild -- real people coping with real world issues of survival.

Unfortunately, many environmental documentaries fail to ‘move people’ because they pack too much information, or worse, preach too heavily. Some film-makers feel they must ‘inform and educate’ at all costs.

They forget that we are story-tellers, first and last. This is what Bruce Moir, a very experienced Australian film professional who has been Executive Production Consultant on our film projects, keeps reminding us. “Our fundamental job is to tell a story,” he says, “one that holds an audience’s interest and moves their heart, regardless of language, cultural context or subject….I have always believed that film achieves its optimal impact by aiming to ‘get at the audience’s head via their heart’ rather than the other way around.”

Al Gore has recognized this. Critics used to lampoon Gore as a bore, and with reason. But his move from power to Powerpoint seems to have transformed the once stiffest politician in America to an amiable, credible story teller. One that even his political detractors might hear out.

An Inconvenient Truth is not the most visually engaging environmental film – it doesn’t offer us cuddly animals, deadly chemicals, forest infernos or colourful sunsets. But when we take a closer look, we see how hard Gore and his team from Participant Productions have tried to engage audiences.

But it’s when Gore tells his own personal stories that he really reaches out. He recalls spending summer vacations at the family’s tobacco farm in Carthage, Tennessee. Around the same time, evidence started emerging on the connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer. Yet the Gore family farm continued growing tobacco. His own sister Nancy (‘my protector and friend at the same time’) started smoking as a teenager and became addicted. She died of lung cancer aged ….

He recalls: “My father had grown tobacco all his life. Whatever explanation that seemed to make sense in the past just didn't cut it anymore. He stopped.”

Al Gore is not the first environmentalist to draw parallels between big tobacco and big oil. But his is not merely a rational plea. By sharing his story of personal loss and anguish, he adds a human dimension to his facts, figures and persuasive arguments.

He relates the micro with macro, and personal with global. “It's human nature to take time to connect the dots. I know that. But I also know there can be a day of reckoning when you wish you had connected the dots more quickly."

It’s not easy to connect the dots in a complex and nuanced phenomenon like climate change. Scientists and journalists have been talking about it for almost 20 years, and politicians are now joining the conversation, probably sensing votes. That’s all well and good, but changing lifestyles will take time, effort -- and many more compelling moving images.

An Inconvenient Truth and The Great Warming have got us off to a promising start. Both go beyond theatrical releases, film festival circuits and DVD sales and invoke the power of the Internet to build loyal constituencies to multiply and amplify their message.

Stonehaven Films, makers of A Great Warming, are working with educators and evangelists to mobilise public opinion and pressurise politicians. Meanwhile, Al Gore has joined with a team of renowned climate scientists and educators to train more than 1,000 individuals who will then give a version of his presentation to community groups throughout the US.  

We can only hope that these ‘Gore clones’ will take away not just the facts and figures, but also his passion and communication skills. A healthy mix of rational thinking and emotional appeal will stand a better chance of moving people to kick their addition to oil.

Allowing real people to tell their own personal experiences can also be very effective. I realised this five years ago, when we commissioned the first-ever documentary on climate change and the South Pacific, made by a native Pacific islander. Voices from the Waves, directed and produced by Bernadette Masianini of Fiji, was narrated by two teenagers growing up on two islands, each facing an uncertain future.

At one point we meet Mrs Saipolua, an ordinary woman who lives on the island of Kiribati, where no place is higher than a few feet above the sea. She is distressed having had to move her home twice in a past decade due to the receding shoreline.
For Kiribati’s 82,000 inhabitants, climate change is not theory; it’s already lashing on their beaches.

“Our house used to be in that spot,” Mrs Saipolua points to a place that’s now permanently submerged. “This is where we relocated to the second time.”

She points to several tombstones that are on the verge of being washed away. “Even the final resting places of our loved ones are not spared…..The sea action had cracked the gravestones.”

Nalaka Gunawardene counts two decades of experience as journalist, writer and broadcaster communicating science and sustainable development issues to the general public. He co-founded TVE Asia Pacific in 1996. Detailed profile of Nalaka Gunawardene