GREENPEACE: How To Change The World

[Oscar]

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD - Greenpeace Documentary with Dir. Jerry Rothwelll

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LE9BpQyhCQ ]

Published on Feb 13, 2015

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD, a documentary about Greenpeace is shared by director Jerry Rothwell. We talk about accessing the Greenpeace archives and video footage to tell the story of Greenpeace and how it changed from its inception up to today. We take a look at clips of the film from its premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, in this special BYOD interview hosted by Ondi Timoner.

FILM INFO & GUEST BIO:
Before it was the world’s largest activist organization, Greenpeace was the love child of an eclectic group of Vancouver neighbors (journalists, scientists, and hippies). United in their opposition to a U.S. atomic test on an Alaskan island, they sailed an aging fishing boat straight for the test site. Armed only with cameras and faith in the power of images, the rainbow warriors were born.

The byproduct of their media savvy is an archival treasure trove from which Jerry Rothwell has constructed a gripping chronicle of Greenpeace’s early history. Remarkable footage, audio recordings, and photographs capture its most dramatic, iconic, and poignant moments, from the remnants of mass slaughter at an abandoned whaling station to the maneuvering of Zodiacs between the whales and Russian harpoons.

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD unfolds as a hippie heist movie-turned-high sea adventure but remains an intimate portrait of the group’s original members and of activism itself—idealism vs. pragmatism, principle vs. compromise. They agreed that a handful of people could change the world; they just couldn’t agree how to do it. — J.N.

Jerry Rothwell is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes the award-winning feature docs, DONOR UNKNOWN, about a sperm donor and his many offspring, HEAVY LOAD, about a group of people with learning disabilities who form a punk band, and DEEP WATER (co-directed with Louise Osmond), about Donald Crowhurst's ill-fated voyage in the 1968 round the world yacht race. His latest film is TOWN OF RUNNERS, released theatrically in the UK from April 2012, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.

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How to Change the World trailer: Greenpeace's rise examined in new documentary – video

[ http://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2 ... iler-video ]

WATCH TRAILER:

How to Change the World, a documentary that charts the birth of the modern environmental movement, explores how Greenpeace developed from a small group of idealistic environmentalists into a sophisticated protest movement known for their use of 'mindbombs' (images – such as a dinghy blocking the path of whaling ship – that today we'd call 'viral'). The live premiere with satellite Q&A hosted by Mariella Frostrup and special guests, including Vivienne Westwood, will be broadcast to cinemas across the UK on 9 September. The film's in UK cinemas from 11 September

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[Oscar]

How to Change the World

[ http://www.viff.org/theatre/films/fc854 ... -the-world ]

(UK, Canada, 2015, 112 mins, DCP) Classification: PG

Director: Jerry Rothwell, FEATURING Paul Watson, Patrick Moore, Rex Weyler, Bob Hunter

The Greenpeace story is vividly and dramatically told in Jerry Rothwell’s riveting documentary, a movie that reminds us of the central role Vancouver played in the foundation of the modern environmental movement, as well as the often difficult path that movement has followed over the years.

Drawing on seemingly bounteous reels of home movie footage, Rothwell takes us back to 1971, when a group of friends set sail from Vancouver and headed out towards the nuclear test zone at Amchitka Island off the coast of Alaska, intent on putting themselves in harm’s way.

Among the crew was Bob Hunter, who wrote about the counter-culture for the Vancouver Sun, but who gave up his column to concentrate on activism.

According to Hunter, Vancouver at that time could boast "the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, shit-disturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world."

Among them were two more crew members on the Greenpeace boat: Paul Watson, and Patrick Moore. The clash between the passionate, obsessive and impulsive Watson and the more controlling and strategically-minded Moore becomes the dramatic lynchpin of the tale, and Rothwell counterpoints the two men’s perspectives in a series of frank and revealing interviews.

Meanwhile it’s clear that without the leadership and charisma of the more spiritually-minded Hunter, Greenpeace would probably have foundered before it even got underway.

Hunter’s media-savvy was critical too, in kick-starting the set pieces and stunts that were the main weapons of the new protest movement. He understood the power of images to set the TV news agenda (hence all that archival material); Hunter called them "mindbombs" and How to Change the World fires off plenty.

"Rousing… Full of heart-wrenching imagery." Sterlin Johnson, Indiewire

"Candid, beautiful, poetic." Globe and Mail