In social justice struggles, we’re often faced with the task of explaining ongoing systemic problems in a way that’s both logically convincing and emotionally persuasive.
On a daily basis, we face off against widespread issues with deep-rooted causes. Take climate change, for instance. The root of the problem—a capitalist, colonialist system that strives toward infinite growth—can seem pretty abstract. It can feel hard to explain these issues and their sweeping effect on the planet, even when you understand them.
Understanding something and distilling it into a nutshell that others will fully grasp the significance of are two different things.
That’s one of the strengths of video—it can help us distill complex concepts in a compelling way. It can help us arrive at the simplicity beneath the complexity, giving us a tool for explaining the changes we’re working to create. And when we don’t have the personal experience to convey the full depth and breadth of emotion that we may hear in stories from the people on the frontlines of an issue, video provides a way to share those stories (assuming, of course, they’re willing to tell them).
I recently went to a presentation in Salt Lake City by a renowned climate scientist—one of the leading experts in the field. She presented a plethora of facts and figures about the dire state of the world, but I found myself wondering when she was going to get to the stories—stories of humans and other living beings confronted with catastrophic climate change. Despite my deep concern about the issue she was discussing, I struggled not to fidget in my seat. Anyone who hadn’t fully accepted the reality of climate change yet needed to hear those stories, and I feared that eyes were glazing over instead of being opened by metrics on wildfires and rising sea levels.
As this experience showed, experts aren’t always storytellers, and data alone doesn’t move most people to action. When discussing the enormity of issues like climate change, we need to make them relatable to those who are still unconvinced or on the fence. Data are important—but they need to be interspersed into stories, rather than becoming the main or only story. A practiced filmmaker can move back and forth between bite-size snippets of data and the personal stories that will truly resonate with audiences.
When facing down catastrophic climate change, filmmakers have skillfully used video to highlight its direct human impacts. Hearing people’s stories firsthand makes an issue relatable rather than abstract. That helps the viewer to grasp the full significance of the effects of climate change, like rising seas, superstorms, and desertification.
For instance, the short film One Every Second illuminates the far-reaching human impacts of climate change by showing how becoming a refugee affects countless girls and women. The main character in this documentary, Pakhi, shares her story of being forced into prostitution before age 15 after leaving her village. In other interviews in the film, experts present data to connect her story to the larger picture, lending a better idea of the full scale of the problem.
This film also shows how climate change intersects with other social justice issues—namely, human trafficking and gender disparities in general—or perhaps more accurately, isn’t separable from them in any sense. Climate change can’t be compartmentalized into a silo, this film shows. Viewers can often more easily grasp such interconnections by learning about someone else’s lived experience than by hearing some academic explanation of how they intersect.
Importantly, a film can also allow people to share their stories far and wide without having to retell their story time and time again. Such stories can be deeply painful and even re-traumatizing to retell. When a person wishes to share such a story, recording an interview may feel like a better option than speaking about it to countless audiences and dealing with intrusive questions.
A video doesn’t need to be a feature-length documentary to have a powerful effect. In fact, a short video can actually be much more approachable and shareable. Like a poem, it may ask people to look at the world differently, shaking them awake through a compelling story. It takes them out of their daily routine for just a few moments, but it can create a shift in perspective that will influence them for years to come.
A film on Syrian refugees in National Geographic’s short film showcase by Lior Sperandeo does exactly that, presenting an intimate portrait of the realities of their lives. Beginning with mundane scenes of everyday life in a refugee camp, it moves into adrenalized scenes of harrowing ocean crossings and landings on unfamiliar shores.
Losing Ground, directed by Lisa Hornak and Erin Stone, illustrates how a farming community living in low-lying islands near Bangladesh faces monumental storms and flooding, forcing residents to move to cities to earn a living. It shares the story of a couple that must live apart because the husband has been forced to go to a city for work, as their village is plagued by food insecurity.
Similarly, Desplazada portrays a village dealing with the difficult decision to move to the mainland. The desire to hold onto traditions and an existing way of life comes into collision with the need for community preservation. The need to relocate intensifies the pressures of modernization they are already facing, which are making it difficult for the younger generation to hold onto their culture.
By sharing personal stories, these videos make the issue of climate change poignant and immediate, instead of an abstract concept. They remind us that while climate change involves global systems and far-reaching feedback loops, its effects are anything but abstract—and the need for mutual aid to mitigate its human rights implications is growing every day.
At the same time, when we’re creating films or choosing one to share with local audiences, we should strive to find ones that don’t present their subjects simply as victims, but rather, as the protagonists of their own story—as people with agency. In all of the above films, people are actively navigating their world and struggling to ensure their own future—even if they’re not sure what they want it to look like. Likewise, when we talk about such films and the people featured in them, it’s critical not to essentialize people as victims. The experience of victimization can certainly be a component of one’s identity, but pasting the label of “victim” on someone tends to supersede all other aspects of identity. It’s extremely limiting, and stereotyping an entire demographic as victims can make it tough for them to move forward in the way they choose as they navigate their next steps in life.
When we share films with local audiences—whether online or in-person—we can allow this perspective to inform how we speak about the characters. Whether we’re creating a film about a pressing social justice issue or presenting films that others have created, we can highlight the voices of the people who are most affected by the issues we’re fighting. In turn, listening to their voices can guide us to take leadership from those who are at the center of these struggles, rather than viewing them as victims or statistics. By sharing stories that will move our fellow community members on a personal level, we’ll enrich our collective understanding of the world around us and allow ourselves and others to be moved by the voices that have the most power to move us. That’s how we grow as a movement, and how we’ll get more people to join us.
Moonclaw Pictures 