From A Movie To A Movement

 

About three years ago, I found myself sitting in an edit room in New York City, writing and post producing a one-hour documentary for National Geographic, when an email popped up from a film director friend of mine from NZ, Mike Single. Mike and I had co-produced a film for PBS seven years prior, but hadn’t had the opportunity to work together on another, since. We lived on opposite sides of the planet, after all. Mike’s email described a new project he was asked to shoot and direct; an incredible feature-length documentary about a group of about 120 South Pacific Islanders who would, be sailing (and celestially navigating!) a fleet of Polynesian-style voyaging canoes (called vakas), equipped with solar panels, on a 20,000 mile journey across the Pacific in order to carry an environmental message about the ocean’s health to the world. 

“The story hasn’t been developed yet,” he told me. “But I’d like you to write it and work with me on it. Interested?”  There was absolutely no hesitation in my response. I was on board.

It wasn’t until I started delving into the research that I began to realize just how huge this project was – this was NOT your typical documentary. And this was NOT my typical “writing gig.” There were so many facets to it – the environmental thread, the spiritual, the physical, the cultural, the historical. . . How would I ever be able to weave together a story that captured everything this voyage embodied?  It seemed too big, too complex. And further, what do I know about the Pacific? I grew up in the Northeast. The Atlantic was “my” ocean. I began to feel like I was in a bit over my head.

And then I met Tua Pittman, the Master Navigator from the Cook Islands, who would soon become our main character and one of my dearest friends. We met in Auckland a month before the voyage began, and he told me his story. He explained where he came from, his connection to the ocean, and what it means to be a citizen – and steward — of the Pacific.  He talked to me about the importance of the canoe in South Pacific culture.  “We have a saying: ‘The canoe is our island, and the island is our canoe.’ It is not simply a vessel that moves us, the canoe is a movement of the people.”  As he spoke, I felt a calm wash over me and I began to understand. These different threads to the story were not at all separate, but rather so finely and intricately woven that they cannot be frayed. The cultural draws from the spiritual, which feeds the environmental — and ALL are steeped in the Ocean. 

It was then that I realized the only way to tell this story was to keep my voice out of it — a tough concession for a New Yorker!  But seriously, my role was to be a listener, a participant, a student.  Over the course of the next three years, I would spend time traveling with the Pacific Voyagers (as they would come to be known), asking questions, and learning from them — they are the storytellers.  As the canoes made their way across the Pacific, from New Zealand to Hawaii, California to Cocos Islands, the Galapagos to the Solomons, we uncovered a story as ancient as it is modern, as sacred as it is scientific. 

Most importantly, we came to see the canoe as a metaphor for the planet.  A place of limited resources, where you must rely on each other and work together to manage those resources sustainably in order to survive. And with that notion, the title of our film was born: Our Blue Canoe.  We are currently in the final stages of the edit.   

Here is the trailer:

Through the film (due to be released theatrically next year), the audience will come to relate to the ocean in all its power and fragility through the experience of these intrepid sailors. We’ll revel in the company of Blue Whales, and curse the trash floating on the swells. We’ll whisper prayers through the feral storms, and celebrate safe arrivals on remote and wild shores. The voyagers' journey becomes our journey.  And at the heart of their story is the notion that this ocean is not a barrier that separates our islands, our cultures, our nations and continents, but rather the bridge that links us all. 

Though the voyage (and filming) has ended, The Pacific Voyagers community continues to grow.  Nearly 8,000 people are followers on their Facebook page and we have  nearly 3,000 on Our Blue Canoe’s.  The PacificVoyagers Foundation is engaged in a number of educational and sustainability projects from a Food Sovereignty project, to the building of smaller solar powered vakas to be used for inter-island transport, to larger movements such as the Fossil Fuel Free Energy Production and the Organization of Fish Exporting Countries initiatives.

I could have never known three years ago where this would all take me. But when I first stepped onto the vaka, I felt something small shift in me and I knew it was the beginning of something transformative. What began as a “gig” has evolved into something deep, and rich, and personal. And not a day goes by that I don’t feel humbled and blessed to be a part of something so powerful.

I hope that everyone who sees the film (when it is released next year) will come to understand that these voyagers are not merely characters in a film, they have become our family, our friends, our mentors, our Navigators. And though I may have been hired to do a job – to shape a story — the truth is, it’s these beautiful, courageous, extraordinary people who are, in fact, shaping mine.

Follow Our Blue Canoe on facebook at: www.facebook.com/ourbluecanoethefilm

And the Pacific Voyagers at: www.facebook.com/pacificvoyager

Photos courtesy of The Pacific Voyagers Foundation.  Copyright 2013.

There's An Ocean On My Mountain!

Welcome to The Mountain Mermaid, the official blog of the newly established community of ocean lovers and advocates called, The Tide Turners.  As a filmmaker, environmental biologist, and educator, I wanted to create a forum where scientists and surfers, teachers and artists, media-makers and policy-makers could come together to splash around thoughts, ideas, and potential solutions to the issues facing our ocean.

I do not intend for this to be a bla-bla-bla blog, where I write, you read, and we all move on.  It is intended instead to be a launching point for an exchange.  I’ll pose a topic each week and would love you to add your comments, join our Facebook community, and follow on Twitter.  So, where do we start?  I suppose by getting personal about our relationship with the ocean.  Here’s my story:

Three years ago, I said goodbye to Brooklyn, New York and set out across the country to Bozeman, Montana.  I had just finished a film about wolverines for PBS and National Geographic and was asked to come out to Montana State University to teach in their MFA program for Science and Natural History Filmmaking.

I expected it would be different – I would be trading skyscrapers made of steel and glass for ones made of rock and ice. Trading the frenetic pulse of the city for the tempered beat of “mountain time.” And trading the sirens and horn blasts for the bugling of elk. All that seemed a pretty fair trade by me. But there was one thing I wasn’t quite ready to trade – and that was the song of the ocean for the silence of the mountains.

I grew up in Rhode Island, “The Ocean State.” And if there was one language I thought I understood well, it was that of the sea. I was familiar with her rant through a storm, as well as her easy lullaby on a quiet summer night. When I moved to New York, I sought out that familiar voice to cut through the noise. Whether taking a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, strolling the Boardwalk on Coney Island, or dipping my toes in the Atlantic at Rockaway Beach, the voice of the ocean was a constant companion and it centered me.

With a move to Montana, I expected that voice to be hushed. The nearest ocean would now be the Pacific, and that would be nearly 1000 miles away.

As a filmmaker, I guess I should have known to expect the unexpected. . .

A thousand miles sure seems a long way for a voice to be carried, but the ocean is a powerful force. The mighty Pacific perpetually evaporates and whips itself into clouds which hitch an eastbound ride on the wind, halt over the Rockies, and cloak these rugged peaks in white for nine months of the year.  It’s simple, it’s elemental, it’s poetry . . . it’s music.

Yes, even here in this land-locked state, the language of the ocean is communicated in rich, full verse. It’s not heard through the pounding of surf, or lapping of waves — the summertime serenade with which I was acquainted.  Here in the mountains, the ocean sings in a different register: it pings across the ice of a blue-white glacier, it rasps in the whirling diamond dust on a sub-zero morning, it grunts in the steamy breath of a bison rooting for forage, and it whispers as softly as a lover as it falls as snow on the evergreens. It’s the Ocean’s very own Rhapsody in White.

We often think in terms of what separates us: our religion, our color, our land, our language. We tend to frame our lives in the context of “boundaries,” but if there is one thing that I have learned since moving from sea-level to five-thousand feet, it’s that nothing is truly isolated. Everything is interconnected, interdependent.  Mountain needs Ocean as bone needs blood.  As modern society needs ancient wisdom.  As music needs ears that are open.

So, in the spirit of that connection, I invite you this week to share a bit about YOUR relationship with the ocean.  How do you define it?  Where did it start?  What excites you?

 

No matter where we find ourselves -- on the edge of shoreline, in the heart of a city, in the thick of a forest, or at the top of a mountain -- the ocean is what links us; supplying us the oxygen for every second breath we take.  Think about that -- and then breathe deep. That’s our starting point.  Now let’s dive in, collaborate, and turn some tides!

Please comment, follow, and join the Tide Turners Facebook and Twitter community as well.