Covid Recovery

Made this with with the brilliant Chris Phillips and the very impressive Steph Hodgins May presenting, about the dodgy Covid Recovery Taskforce that the Morrison Government put together in early 2020 - that have recommended Australia use millions of dollars of public money to fund gas infrastructure to rebuild the economy.

This is a bad idea for a few reasons; gas is a major contributor to climate change and the world needs to be transitioning away from fossil fuels as soon as possible; Australia is perfectly placed to be a leader in renewable energy and those projects should be prioritised over gas; this is not what the people want, polls show Australians want action on climate especially after the 2019-20 bushfires; and lastly, this reeks of corruption, with several of the Covid Recovery Commissioners also working as executives in major international gas companies.

Cheers,

Kim

Sabyah fights for the future

In November and December 2019, and then July 2020, I filmed and recorded Sabyah as part of a documentary project directed by Irja von Bernstorff, for german TV series and a feature film.

The series is about young people in different parts of the world fighting to protect their local environments, and when I met Sabyah she was living in northern Queensland, not far from Adani's Carmichael Mine site and coal export terminal.

I met Sabyah at Camp Binbee, a remote camp of anti-coal activists engaging in non-violent direct action to slow down and hopefully stop the construction of the Carmichael Mine and the railroad Adani is attempting to build to transport the Galilee Basin coal.

Sabyah was the only young person in her town involved in the fight for a safe future, and was being socially ostracised by many of the other young people. We filmed her efforts to engage her classmates in her activism, and all the challenges that presented. It was tough for her, the area she lived in was super conservative, and she was seen as a radical outsider, with very few people apart from the Camp Binbee activists and her mum to tell her she was doing the right thing. Many people, let alone kids, would have given up long before we got there.

This photo is taken near Nimbin in July 2020, where Sabyah had moved in early 2020. She's an amazing young person and I was so excited and privileged to be part of this project. The series and film comes out soon.

Dirty Power: Burnt Country

I made this film for Greenpeace Australia Pacific in May 2020, with the amazing Chris Phillips.

Much like Dirty Power in 2019, we wanted to expose the very close ties between the coal industry, the Coalition and the Murdoch Media, that maintain inaction on climate change in Australia, and therefore contributed to the bushfire disaster of 2019-20.

Most of the information in the film was already on the public record, so my task was mainly pulling it together into a coherent narrative, while Chris was responsible for most of the visuals.

I was able to interview Emily Townsend, a former News Corp staffer, who shares her experiences of News Corp's climate denialism from the inside. And Professor Joo-Cheong Tham, who describes Australia's dysfunctional political donations oversight allowing hundreds of millions of dollars in political donations to remain untraceable.

Our hope is that this film will help move Australia towards greater climate action, to avoid bushfire catastrophes becoming the norm.

Cheers, Kim