From our 2016 Festival:
“In Vancouver, in 1971, we have the biggest concentration of tree huggers, draft dodgers, shit disturbing unionists, radical students, garbage dump stoppers, freeway fighters, pot smokers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, fish preservationists and back-to-the-landers on the planet. And we are all hunted by the spectre of a dead world,” famously stated Bob Hunter when describing the conditions that gave rise to the most influential environmental activist movement in history: Greenpeace.
It was this motley crew of odd characters – reluctantly led by Hunter himself – that inspired the world’s collective imagination by challenging Nixon’s plans to use Alaska as a testing ground for nuclear bombs and taking on Russian whaling fleets by putting themselves directly in the way of the deadly harpoons.
Recipient of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing at Sundance and nominated as Best Documentary Feature at this year’s Canadian Screen Awards, How to Change the World showcases never-before-seen footage of the early days of Greenpeace and turns them into inspiring and undeniable evidence that it is possible for the common man to change the course of history.
Sponsored by Halton GreenScreens
A Q&A session with former Greenpeace activist Dan McDermott followed the screening.
DAN MCDERMOTT is Chapter Director of Sierra Club Ontario and has worked with the Club since 1998. In 1976/77 Dan and other Toronto based environmentalists organized what initially was to be a local Greenpeace support group. The involvement of Dan and his colleagues quickly expanded to active participation in Greenpeace campaigns and the start of the first Greenpeace campaign opposing nuclear power. He was a member of the Greenpeace Canada Board of Directors 1980-1988 and worked in several capacities into the 90s including as Canadian Campaign Coordinator and International Acid Rain Coordinator.
