Hey peeps. If you have been following Permaculture The Documentary you would have seen the last update video with me, (If not click here) talking about the next plan for the doco. The flights to Victoria to meet David Holmgren and have an interview are booked for April 2019 at his farm Melloidora in Hepburn Heights.
I spoke to David Holmgren over Skype and had a great conversation talking about Permaculture. There are so many layers to it and really we could spend months nutting out the details, but focus is the key when comes to creating a film and sticking to an angle that feels the most 'right' is key.
One of the main concepts around this film is to introduce Permaculture to everyday people in a way that is easy to understand and also makes a lot of sense. So I had a big long think about how this could be put together into a 60 minute film. What is appealing about Permaculture? I realised, it was what attracted me to it in the first place; this simple idea: if we look at nature, it is the most productive and efficient thing on this planet. In nature there is no waste, because everything is used by something else. Nothing we do compares. Everything we have created eventually becomes some sort of pollution. So, why not learn from nature and stop producing pollution. If we can mimic what nature does, then we would not have the problems we have today; climate change, plastic in our oceans, pollution in our cities and even starvation in poorer countries, because nature has already proven and demonstrated that all these problems are preventable.
So with this in mind, I want to create this same feeling of realisation in the film and to do that I'm taking inspiration from how I discovered Permaculture and exploring how that sparked me to create this film and translate that into a story within the film. I'll explain this more in another update.
So the plan to interview David is to understand how Permaculture came to be. To find out how Permaculture, in its early conception with Bill Mollison and David Holmgren came to fruition. How did they realise that initial power of nature and why they became so determined to share their findings with the world and create a platform called Permaculture. There is something there, behind the story of Permaculture, where its roots formed. It explains the reason it was created. If I can discover that, I think that could be way to connect people to its purpose and create that 'realisation' for people. And, that realisation is what ignited that spark for me.
On a side note, there are problems with how Permaculture is perceived by the mainstream and this has negative connotations. As someone who only discovered Permaculture a few years ago, I understand how some things do come across. From the outside it looks like a far left hippy thing and a revert back to simpler times. The other problem is the complexity of it all can be daunting for anyone to trying to learn more about once its understood the fundamentals. These are problems I want to solve through this film and provide people a platform to go learn from.
So saying that, I'd like to explore the core ideas with David around some principles and how him and Bill came to conceptualise them and why they are important. These then will be explored further through short stories (Case Studies) of actual people who practice it and demonstrate how you can start, but it will be told through human experience. What I mean is the story is what drives the scenes. The principles, ethics and methods are embedded as themes organically. Story is the most important element for this film.
You can think of David as almost a narrator that bridges one scene to the next in the film that takes you on a journey of discovering Permaculture, meeting characters and learning about their reasons why it's important to them. This isn't an information film, its a cinematic narrative documentary that is about giving giving Permaculture a human story, so people not only have a better understanding of it, but will emotionally be connected to the importance of its purpose.
More to come on the film in later posts.
Comments