Tag: climate change

The Battle for Laikipia

Directors – Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi – 2024 – US, Kenya, Greece – Cert. 12a – 94m

Disagreements in Kenya between indigenous, pastoralist herdsmen and white immigrant farmers come to a head during a severe drought exacerbated by climate change – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 4th

Shot mostly between 2017 and 2019 – so before the COVID pandemic – this is a brave attempt to relate two opposing and seemingly irreconcilable sides to a specific conflict.

Laikipia is a large, wildlife conservation area of Kenya, and the film was made some 60 or so years after Kenyan independence.

On the one hand, indigenous Kenyan tribesmen have been grazing their herds of goats and cattle on the land, simply wandering around and letting the animals graze at any suitable pasture they find. There is no concept of land ownership, except the unspoken idea that this is their country and this is therefore their land, which seems reasonable enough.

On the other hand, the early part of the twentieth century saw white British settlers awarded large areas of land to set up farms on the more profitable, Western capitalist business model. These people have now lived in the country and run their farms as enclosed ranches for some four generations.… Read the rest

Tags acreage, arrest, back-to-the-land, British immigrant, business, business model, candidate, capitalist, cattle, climate change, commercial, common ground, conflict, country, COVID, Daphne Matziaraki, deplete, disagreement, diversity, drought, election, enclosed, enclosed land, farmers, farms, global issues, goats, grass, grazing, Greece, hate speech, herds, herdsman, history, incitement of violence, indigenous, irreconcilable, irresolvable, justice and injustice, Kenya, Kifuku Ranch on modern, Laikipia, land grab, land ownership, land ownership rights, Lempurkel, Maria Dodds, mobile phone footage, nationality, opposed factions, opposing, pandemic, pastoralist, pasture, Peter Murimi, ranches, settlers, slaughter, small scale approach, stress, struggle, struggling financial, survival, tribesman, tribesmen, US, Western, white British, wildlife conservation area

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Disconnect Me

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 April 2024
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Director – Alex Lykos – 2023 – Australia – Cert. 12 – 87m

***1/2

A man attempts to live for 30 days without the use of his smartphone, tablet or computer – out on digital from Monday, April 1st

This documentary opens with an advisory to keep your phone handy during the screening, as you may be required to use it at some point. In the UK, it’s only available on digital platforms… but even so, that advisory marks it out as different from most films.

Lykos, who narrates his documentary, is old enough to have grown up without a smartphone or other digital devices, but kids today handle smartphones from a younger and younger age. What would happen, wonders Alex, if I disconnected myself for an entire month? His and his wife’s home contains their two smartphones, two tablets, and a TV. Learning that Alex wakes and checks his smartphone three or four times a night, Alex’s doctor wires him for a sleep test.

Like many of us, Alex finds himself spending an hour on social media and wondering, what just happened? He and others admit to feelings of envy when others post about good things in their lives. A near-tearful divorcee talks about it being hard seeing people having a good time with partner or family.… Read the rest

Tags 30 days, ADHD, advertising revenue, AI, alcohol, Alex Lykos, Amanda Third, anorexia message, antenna, anxiety, attention, Australia, authoritarian governments, binge-watching TV series, board game, body image issues, Bolivia, brain, brain chip transplants, brain enhance, bullying, check smartphone at night, child labour, cigarettes, climate change, clinical psychiatrist, cognitive impairment, colour-blind, computer, Cultural Research, cyborg, cyborg artist, Cyborg Artist Neil Harbisson, Dalek, data service provider, David Cronenberg related, depression, digital, digital alarm clock, diminished critical thinking, disconnect; access, distraction, doctor, documentary, Dr. Catriona Wallace, Dr. Danielle Einstein, driving, economics, envy, evolution, experiment, Facebook, feel valued, first world, flipper phone, flippy, friends, gambling, get a real job, golf, government services, Greek, human extinction, impulsivity, injustice, interaction with AI, international regulation, justice, kids today, killing machines, landline phone, laptop, lethal autonomous weapons, life expectancy, live without, loneliness, loo, low self-esteem, machines taking over, med, medicine, Meta, mining minerals, Monopoly, month, National Broadcast Network, NBN, neck position, need to talk, negative space, Neil Harbisson, news, newspaper, not answering the phone, OCD, paper, parents and children, phone snubbing, phubbing, poorer countries, posture, prescription, primary school, Professorial Research Fellow, QR codes, reach, reduced attention span, regulation, Responsible Metaverse Alliance, rotary, safe, security code, shopping, sleep disorders, sleep test, smartphone, smartphone production, smartphone use, smartphones in the classroom, Social, social media, sports results, Sydney, tablet, target, target audience, technology, technology specialist, teenagers, television, third world, Timothy Stackpool, toilet, traffic, traffic accident, transhumanism, TV, updates, view, vox pops

Features Live Action Movies

How to
Blow Up
a Pipeline

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 21 April 2023
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Blow Up
a Pipeline
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Collaborators – Daniel Goldhaber, Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol, Daniel Garber – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 103m

****

An eco-terrorism thriller based on the manifesto by Andreas Malm – out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, April 21st.

Credited as a film by its four main collaborators (its three writer-producers and its editor) rather than (as is the usual industry practice) merely its director Goldhaber (Cam, 2018), this is based on climate change activism apologist Andreas Malm’s non-fiction treatise which argues for the destruction of property e.g. fossil fuel industry infrastructure as part of the fight against the fossil fuel industry which is causing climate change. What the book doesn’t do is tell the reader the techniques and specifics that would enable them to actually blow up a pipeline.

Likewise, this movie doesn’t provide the viewer with the knowledge and technical wherewithal that would enable them to blow up pipelines after watching it. Like Malm, it offers moral justification(s) for the act. It shows a committed group of young people who have between them carried out extensive research into everything necessary for their planned act and reached a point of moral choice where they feel they have no other option than to carry out such an action.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

How To
Blow Up
A Pipeline

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 18 April 2023
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Blow Up
A Pipeline
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Combatting spiritual wickedness

How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Film by
Daniel Goldhaber, Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol, Daniel Garber
Certificate 15, 103 minutes
Released 21 April

A radical film whose four makers eschew the widespread film industry notion of the film director as sole author, film production being a collaborative process. It follows a group of young eco-terrorists pursuing their eponymous goal. That title is taken from Andreas Malm’s book, which argues that the fossil fuel industry’s ‘business as usual’ approach to global warming dictates that the only effective way to fight climate change is via property destruction and sabotage.

If this sounds a long way from any concept of non-violent Christian protest, bear in mind the biblical mandate of good stewardship over God’s creation. Here lies a challenging tension. At the present time, these ideas appear to be in conflict and different believers may come to very different conclusions. The apostle Paul tells us, ‘If it is possible … live at peace with everyone.’ But has the fossil fuel industry made it impossible?… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

This review originally appeared in Reform magazine.

Read my longer, alternative review on this site.

Trailer:

Features Live Action Movies

The Worst Person
In The World
(Verdens Verste
Menneske)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 25 March 2022
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In The World
(Verdens Verste
Menneske)
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Director – Joachim Trier – 2021 – Norway – Cert. 15 – 128m

*****

A young woman learns about both herself and life through two personal relationships – twice Oscar-nominated film is on MUBI from Friday, May 13th

Trying to reinvent herself, Julie (Renate Reinsve) spends her student days moving from medicine into psychology (believing she’s more interested in what’s inside than skin and bones) then photography as she decides she’s a visual person. Suddenly the world opens up to her, she’s meeting new people and before long she’s moved in with popular comic book artist Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie from 22 July, Paul Greengrass, 2018; Personal Shopper, Oliver Assayas, 2016). He is 15 years older than her and wants to have kids (he’s the only one in his family who hasn’t yet done so). She isn’t currently ready for that.

One night, after being pictured standing on an Oslo balcony in a repeat of the shot that opens the film, she leaves early from Aksel’s latest book launch and walking home gatecrashes a wedding party where she meets Elvind (Herbert Nodrum), their conversation gets very deep very quickly and they agree that neither of them will cheat on their respective partners, but then, as Julie says, where do you draw the line?… Read the rest

Tags #MeToo, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2021-22, Academy Awards 2022, activism, Anders Danielsen Lie, book launch, cheat, cigarette, cigarette smoke, climate change, climate change activism, collecting, comic, comic book, comic book artist, conversation, Deniz Kaya, draw the line, environment, Eskil Vogt, father, flip a light switch, flip a switch, futility, Hans Olave Brenner, Herbert Nodrum, hospital, Joachim Trier, light switch, Maria Grazia Di Meo, medicine, mother, Norway, Oscars, Oscars 2021-22, Oscars 2022, Oslo, pancreatic cancer, parents and children, park, partner, party, photography, pregnancy, psychology, reindeer, relationship, Renate Reinsve, sex, street, student, terminal illness, time stands still, walk, wedding party, yoga

Features Live Action Movies

I Am Greta

The Greta good

I am Greta
Directed by Nathan Grossman
Certificate 12a, 98 minutes
Released on 16 October

Greta Thunberg is, without doubt, a remarkable young woman. And this is a remarkable film, although not perhaps for the reasons you might expect.

What’s remarkable is that when the 15-year-old schoolgirl with Asperger’s started her strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament, the documentary film-maker Nathan Grossman possessed the foresight to start filming her. He kept filming as she was invited to address organisations such as the European Parliament in Strasbourg, meet with world leaders such as France’s President Macron and speak to climate activist meetings and rallies around the globe.

You can’t get that close to a person without finding out something about them. Greta is driven by a focus on one issue. As it happens, that issue is the single most important one facing the survival of the human race and the planet. Read the rest…

I review I Am Greta for Reform.

Tags Asperger’s, climate change, climate crisis, consumption, environmentalism, Europe, France, Greta Thunberg, parents and children, Parliament, Planet Earth, school, Strasbourg, survival, Sweden