Land Loss and Lessons in Patience: A Documentary Film in the Works

         I am working on a short documentary on communities facing coastal or riverine erosion in Northern Alaska with Artchange’s guidance. I hope the film highlights two main issues: first, the human experience of living in a place which is losing land far too quickly for anyone’s comfort; and second, how the state and federal governments have failed to adequately address this problem, and how their bureaucracies are particularly unamenable to addressing this sort of problem. What I particularly wish to highlight is how people are collectively responding to such challenges, and explore themes such as mutual assistance and social relations.

Of course, several important historical facts underpin these two issues: the historical relationship between these communities and the land, the resilience and importance of indigenous culture, the history of colonization and exploitation of indigenous communities, and ensuing negligence and marginalisation. To appropriately and sensitively convey this context in a short documentary is one of the primary challenges which beckons.

Approaching Siiḷivik (Selawik), 90 miles East of Kotzebue. A community, like others in the region, experiencing river erosion, thawing permafrost and a decreasing season of ice. (Still from the film Eating Alaska, 2008).

My overarching aim in making this documentary is twofold: on the one hand, I wish to explore how ordinary citizens are responding to environmental adversity without adequate state support; and on the other, somewhat relatedly, I want to explore possibilities. I hope the viewer of the documentary thinks about the myriad ways in which we can relate to each other, and consequently the myriad ways in which we can relate to the environment. A destructive, extractive relationship to resources and ecologies is certainly not inevitable. What would a more sustainable relationship to the environment look like? In a less environmentally destructive world, what kind of promises would we make to one another? These questions motivate me, and these are the ones I’m hoping to answer and find concrete descriptions of through the documentary.

So far, progress on the project has been slower than expected. I began this project thinking more about the technical choices which would best help tell my story: types of compositions, narrative structures, camera specifications, etc. While careful considerations about these these are indispensable to any good film, documentarians also need to invest as much or more time in building relationships with those they work with, and listen to and understand what they have to say. A big lesson I’ve learned is to be patient and to accept that pre-production, where you speak with people and understand the issues they face, takes time and one ought not to pressure that process.

Perhaps most important, speaking with people who face such significant challenges has helped me appreciate the human stakes of the environmental crises we face: besides the physical damage that is certain to occur, everyone I have spoken to has relayed their attachments to the landscapes they inhabit. As a mere interested commentator on climate change, my appreciation for such beauty and poetry has often unwittingly subsided. But conversations with residents of rural Alaska have reminded me, in some sense, what those who hope to mitigate climate change are fighting for. As Max Ehrmann wrote, “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”

Atman Mehta is  a recent graduate of the University of Chicago, where he studied Political Science. His primary interests are in political theory and the political economy. Before those four years in Chicago, he grew up in Bombay, India.