Film

Inside the Climate Crisis Film Festival

The event in Glasgow showed how art can shine a light on the issues that are at the heart of our environmental catastrophe.

A still from Hawaiian Soul.

If COP26 had been a film, its ending was more frustrating and depressingly hollow than that of
No Time To Die.

On the final Friday at 6pm, while intense negotiations were ongoing in the Blue Zone, a couple of hundred metres away on the other side of the Clyde an awards ceremony for the Climate Crisis Film Festival was beginning.

These Oscars of the eco-world were taking place in Glasgow’s Science Centre – home to the second-tier, corporate-tinged Green Zone – and were the culmination of two weeks of in-person and virtual screenings.

While COP26 has been rightly criticised for excluding voices of those on the frontline, the CCFF projected them onto an IMAX screen.

The awards themselves were the first-ever environmental film awards open exclusively to filmmakers who are Black, indigenous, people of colour. The four shortlisted shorts came from wildly different
parts of the world, but each shone a spotlight on communities that find themselves on the frontline. 

Haulover, for example, is a curiously named town on the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua. Last November, Hurricane Eta ravaged the town.

Two weeks later, Hurricane Iota did the same.

In the months that followed, Alvaro Cantillano filmed residents as they decided whether to rebuild their homes from the rubble despite the increasing risk of extreme weather, or to relocate and restart their lives elsewhere.

The final shots of Haulover: Separated are gut-wrenching. Those who stayed behind silently congregate on the beach as towering dark clouds gather and a new storm approaches.

To Calm the Pig Inside deserves accolades for its title alone. In the Philippines, ‘buwa’ is a giant, mythological subterranean swine.

“When angry, they say the earth trembles,” says the young narrator of the film by Joanna Vasquez Arong, that reconciles legends and memories with the devastation wreaked by monsoons,  exploring how people cope with historical – or sudden – trauma.

We can all hear the sea while holding a shell to our ear, but in Time and the Seashell characters can also connect to the past and the future. Mexican director Itandehui Jansen’s film sees a young boy imagining his future, and
an older man recalling his past while they listen to the same shell.

The top prize, winning the Ocean Bottle Film Award, was awarded to Hawaiian Soul, about the musician George Helm, who became a pioneering environmental activist in the 1970s.

For decades, the American military used the island of Kaho‘olawe for bombing practice. The film focuses on the moment Helm found his voice. In 1977 Helm disappeared while travelling to the island. Circumstances are still unexplained.

Article continues below

Current vacancies...

Search jobs

Director Āina Paikai, beaming in from Hawaii, said: “We want to follow his lead, using the love we have in our culture to show and share with other folks what it means to have appreciation for a place.”

After the event, the audience checked their phones to see if, across the river, any deal had been struck. It would take another 24 hours for delegates to decide whether coal should be phased down or out.

Their time would have been better spent watching these films. Setting targets for decades away won’t help. For millions around the world, the climate emergency is not a hypothetical future but a reality right now.

The solutions aren’t secret, their implementation not impossible. So what’s the problem? Mark Decena, a filmmaker and activist from the US, perhaps summed up best the role and responsibility art has.

“We need all these forms of storytelling to make the change we need to see,” he said. “Not just a cart full of facts – a parade wagon of facts dressed as poetry and music and narrative drama and plays and podcasts. We need it all to create that emotional shift in consciousness.”

@stevenmackenzie

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine. If you cannot reach local your vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play.

Support the Big Issue

For over 30 years, the Big Issue has been committed to ending poverty in the UK. In 2024, our work is needed more than ever. Find out how you can support the Big Issue today.
Vendor martin Hawes

Recommended for you

View all
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire review – a heartfelt and 'nostalgia-tickling' sequel
Ernie Hudson and Bill Murray in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Film

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire review – a heartfelt and 'nostalgia-tickling' sequel

The Beautiful Game: Everything you need to know about Netflix's new Homeless World Cup film
Colin Farrell with the Scottish team, holding a football
Homeless World Cup

The Beautiful Game: Everything you need to know about Netflix's new Homeless World Cup film

Robot Dreams director Pablo Berger on grief, loss and the Oscars underdog winning hearts everywhere
Dog is baffled by the assembly instructions for his new robot pal in Robot Dreams
Film

Robot Dreams director Pablo Berger on grief, loss and the Oscars underdog winning hearts everywhere

Cate Blanchett on religion, powerful drama The New Boy and why politics is 'incredibly shameless'
Film

Cate Blanchett on religion, powerful drama The New Boy and why politics is 'incredibly shameless'

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Here's when UK households to start receiving last cost of living payments
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Here's when UK households to start receiving last cost of living payments

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know
4.

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know