NOT A NICHE: INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL BECK, UK GREEN FILM FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
As ice melts, floods ravage parts of Europe and Londoners face the fact that late May is not the time to store away their coats, the UK Green Film Festival is getting ready to kick start its fourth edition. Films that take on tuna fishing, hidden underground tunnels of major cities and a somewhat different expedition to Greenland, all feature in the eclectic programme - this year you can catch it in 17 independent cinemas across the country.
Don’t expect a lecture or guilt-tripping though - the festival takes both its subject matter and audiences seriously, delivering an exciting selection of films whose artistic ambition is not second to the their message. Ahead of the festival’s gala opening on 1st June, Run Riot sat down with Festival Director Daniel Beck: we found out how the festival is curated, why environmental film is not a genre, and whether the green talking to green doing ratio needs to change.
Run Riot: This year The UK Green Film Festival is taking place just weeks after a new comprehensive report revealed human-induced climate change caused irreversible damage. Where do we stand when it comes to public awareness of pressing environmental issues? Is there a loud enough public discussion?
Daniel Beck: It’s a massive step forward that we now live in a world where it is accepted by the majority of people that climate change is influenced by human actions. That for me represents a considerable advancement in the evolution of our understanding of the world around us but we’re yet to work out how these realisations will change our lives and the thoughts of future generations. I think people are more aware of pressing environmental issues than they ever have been but I sense that it’s a disconnected awareness. We all know that we should recycle, save water and energy, buy organic and fair trade and waste less food but do we really know why?
It’s our mission as a film festival to bring the best films from around the world that deal with some of these issues to UK cinemas. We want to inspire people to connect as individuals to the massive global effort that’s required to achieve a healthy, diverse and sustainable future for our planet. Is there a loud enough public discussion around environmental issues? No, but we’re already on borrowed time. The sooner we move beyond discussions and shift our focus to cooperating on inventive, sensible and achievable solutions the better it will be for all of us.
Run Riot: Has environmental film established itself as a genre in its own right? What sets it apart from (other) documentaries?
Daniel Beck: I don’t think so. In many ways the worst thing that could happen is for films dealing with environmental concerns to be pigeonholed in to their own category. I also wouldn’t define environmental film as a documentary only genre. Although this year we have gone with seven documentary films, we’re always on the look out for dramatic features. Our 2013 programme included a beautiful dramatic feature Valley of All Saints, a love story played out on the polluted backdrop of Dal Lake, Kashmir. There’s very little that sets these films apart from others, issues of the environment aren’t restricted to forests, oceans, climate and the protection of species. They can also be issues of religion, race, gender, politics, corruption and human rights. There are many examples of this in our current programme.
Run Riot: The films taking part in the festival seem to cover every corner of the world – from Greenland to Cambodia and from London do Brazil. Can you introduce us to the programme?
Daniel Beck: We have a truly fantastic mix of films this year with award winners and premieres throughout the first week of June. We’re screening in 17 different independent cinemas nationwide and the programme includes films from all corners of the globe. Our opening gala screening takes place at Hackney Picturehouse on the 1st of June, it’s open to the public and will feature the UK Premiere of The Last Catch a film that highlights the crisis facing the blue-fin tuna fishing industry. It’s an exceptional documentary and we’re delighted to be able to screen this film for the first time here in the UK. The opening gala screening will also feature a Q&A with director Markus CM Schmidt and Roberto Mielgo, a participant in the film who will be making a special announcement based around his latest research.Bay of All Saints speaks to us of corruption in Brazil and the poor communities living in wooden shacks built atop piles of waste dumped in to the ocean. Lost Rivers explores the underground tunnels in some of the world’s major cities, including the lost river Tyber running under London’s streets. As well as discovering these hidden rivers, the film shows the positive influence that restoring nature to the world’s city centres can have on their populations. My personal favourite from the programme is Daniel Dencik’s epic adventure film Expedition to the End of the World, following a group of artists, philosophers and scientists on a journey of discovery through the vast, largely unexplored regions of Greenland. It may surprise some people that this film would be included in an environmental film festival but this film shows us how issues of the environment can be philosophical as well as scientific and will be screened as a part of our closing gala on the 8th June, definitely not one to miss. We also have the beautiful Planet Ocean, which is one of the most incredible looking films I have ever seen. Expertly crafted by director and photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Michel Pitiot it shows us the world’s oceans in all their beauty and the fragile balance between man and the sea. A River Changes Course winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance,tells the story of three families living in contemporary Cambodia as they face hard choices forced by rapid development and struggle to maintain their traditional ways of life as the modern world closes in around them. Musicwood follows the world’s major acoustic guitar producers as they try to stop a Native American logging company from destroying some of the last remaining primeval forests in America. We’ve got some fantastic special events for Musicwood including a special World Environment Day screening and performance by Turin Brakes at Hackney Picturehouse on the 5th June and Q&A with the film’s director Maxine Trump.
Run Riot: What can you tell us about the way the festival is curated? How do you balance artistic and environmental criteria within the selection?
Daniel Beck: We operate slightly differently to most film festivals, lots of other festivals programme a whole bunch of films and show them all in a single town/city. We only pick seven but we screen them all over the UK, this means that we can start our search with the intention of finding the very best films out there. Usually we put together a long list of films that we think are the best purely based on their quality as films in their own right and then we produce a shortlist based on other things such as the issues they cover, the integrity of information and whether they have the potential to make a difference.
We want people to come to UK Green Film Festival screenings from all backgrounds and to leave having enjoyed a great movie and a newly acquired knowledge or understanding of the issues dealt with in our films. In the past a lot of environmental features have been guilty of preaching to their audiences or straight up blaming them for stuff they weren’t even aware of. We’re committed to ensuring these films don’t make it in to our programme.
Run Riot: A short film will precede each of the seven feature length films in the festival; do they provide an introduction or additional context to the features?
Daniel Beck: Last year we very carefully matched the shorts to offer an insight in to the subject covered by the feature. This year we’ve taken a slightly different approach, it didn’t quite sit right with us that these exceptionally crafted shorts were reduced to a teaser or supporting role to the feature film they were paired with. This year we have still paired up the shorts with each of the features however, we haven’t really matched them in terms of their subject. We love bringing shorts to our cinema screens, there are many exceptionally talented filmmakers working on environmentally themed shorts and it’s a rare opportunity for their work to be seen by cinema audiences. We also have a Short Film Award category that was won last year by Nick Werber & Dan Childs for their short Reynaldo.
Run Riot: Does environmental film get enough space outside of festivals? What are the chances of seeing one of the films in the programme at a later date?
Daniel Beck: We’re getting there, distributors like Dogwoof are doing exceptional work bringing more environmentally themed films to UK audiences and we’ve had some break-through successes over the past few years with some truly exceptional films such as Blackfish, Chasing Ice and last year’s UK Green Film Festival Audience Award winner More Than Honey. But there’s still some way to go yet before environmentally themed films become a regular feature on UK cinema screens. Personally, I would like to see more funding on offer for filmmakers who are willing to take on these topics.
Run Riot: How do environmental concerns reflect on the festival behind the scenes? What is green about how the UK Green Film Festival is run?
Daniel Beck: Without boring on about the finer details of the recycled print materials we use, probably the greenest thing about us is that we’re absolutely tiny. We operate with a team of just 3-4 part-timers, a few volunteers and a whole bunch of favours. We operate out of spare rooms, coffee shops and bedrooms for about 6 months of the year. Aside from the effect this has on our own sanity, sleeping patterns and bank balances, it is in fact an exceptionally ‘green’ way of running a festival as we can’t afford to be wasteful in anything that we do. We are of course also very grateful to our bigger brothers and sisters at Friends of the Earth who have been an ever-present source of inspiration, support and advice over the past four years that they have been sponsoring the festival.
1st – 8th June