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The Big Picture with Jordan Osmond
1.2k Plays1 year ago
Oh happy day, it’s Jordan Osmond from Happen Films!
Happen Films is one of the most powerful portals of inspiration in the sustainability space; not just trotting out the same old green living tropes but laying new turf, sharing fringe ideas about how to care for land, be in community, and live the change.
I was stoked to sit down with Jordan now that he’s back in Australia and quiz him about filmmaking, changemaking and finances – and like good little optimists, we only mentioned civilisational collapse once.
Follow Happen Films on YouTube
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Professor dude ~ Samuel Alexander
Podcast ~ Possibility Now! with Ethan Hughes
Namaste Foundation/Biome Trust
Permie Neopeasants ~ Artist as Family
Book ~ Artist as Family’s The Art of Free Travel
Permie place ~ Melliodora
Podcast ~ The Great Simplification
Charles Eisenstein ~ The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Happen Films referenced
Living Simply in an Off Grid Tiny House
Recommended
Transcript
The Nature of Leading Goats
00:00:06
Speaker
Have you ever tried to lead a goat? If so...
00:00:11
Speaker
you'll know that it's futile. Goats don't like being led. Even if where you're leading them is great, like a fresh patch of blackberries or a paddock full of wild plums, it doesn't matter. If they sense you're trying to take them somewhere, that you have an agenda, they'll call it a conspiracy and dig their little cloven hooves into the clay. And they're surprisingly strong.
00:00:35
Speaker
Our crusty and beloved old goat pip was an expert level resistor. The moment she felt any pressure on the lead, any pulling or yanking or cajoling, she dropped to her knees, flopped to the ground and just lie there in Shavasana.
00:00:52
Speaker
Over the years, I found a better way to get a goat to go. What you do is hold the lead discreetly in your hand and walk beside the goat, letting them take the lead. When you do, you'll see their ears prick up, their nose drink the wind, and their eyes glint with wild sovereignty. You're still offering gentle guidance, but you're not forcing the issue. You're not dragging them, kicking and bleeding.
00:01:20
Speaker
And it's not just a goat thing. Most humans don't like to be led either. We don't want to be told what to do, where to go, or how to think. Just like goats, we want to forge our own paths and direct our own lives. And this, too, applies to storytelling. There's that classic adage of show, don't tell. Because it's really off-putting when a book or a film or a person comes at you with a motive, trying to persuade you of a message, trying to get you on board.
00:01:49
Speaker
It sets off my propaganda meter, that's for sure.
Interview with Jordan Osmond: Storytelling and Sustainability
00:01:52
Speaker
And the reason I was thinking about all this, about the art and the ethics of storytelling is because this week I'm chatting with someone who is steeped in that world, who shares stories for a living and has to navigate these tensions of showing and telling, of leading and letting, of having a message and also having faith in the audience to come to their own conclusions.
00:02:16
Speaker
Happen Films is one of the most powerful portals of inspiration in the sustainability space, not just trotting out the same old green living tropes, but laying new turf, sharing fringe ideas about how to care for land, be in community and live the change.
00:02:33
Speaker
I was stoked to sit down with one half of Happen Films, Jordan Osmond, now that he's back in Australia, asking him about his approach to filmmaking, what he's learned from the radical folks he profiles, and how he's putting these learnings into practice. While I was being nosy, I also quizzed him about how he earns a crust as a creative. Where does the money come
The Art of Film Editing
00:02:55
Speaker
from? What are his plans, if any, for accessing land? What does he see in humanity's future?
00:03:03
Speaker
Of course, Jordan's positivity is pretty clear in his directorial choices, but it's nice to hear directly from the man behind the lens. Because even though Happen Films' films are incredibly persuasive, leading us down the garden path, through a permaculture herb spiral and towards the food forest, I suspect we're all walking there together, side by side, even the filmmakers, even the goats. I'm Katie, this is Resculience.
00:03:32
Speaker
And I really hope you love this conversation with Jordan Osment. How do you know when a film is ready? When I can't stand to look at it anymore. No, it's definitely it's done when it feels like it's done, if that makes sense. Like the editors is done when you don't get bored watching any point. It feels tight. The story makes sense. It's in a good order.
00:04:00
Speaker
The guy on our team, Nick, who we send the films to for feedback, doesn't come back with anything major. That's when it becomes ready to picture lock and then go to the rest of post-production. Yeah, it gets to a point where it's like, this is good and it's nicely packaged. And yeah, it's something we're proud of to see go up on YouTube.
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I heard that the process of creation can be a process of elimination. Like what can you take away until the thing that you're wanting to make still says, still conveys the message without all of the trimmings, without all of the noise. Is that a way that you work?
00:04:43
Speaker
I love that. I've always thought of cutting down an interview because normally I might shoot an hour and a half interview with somebody that gets turned into 10 minutes. And so a lot of stuff gets cut away, of course, and a lot of good stuff gets cut away because you're just choosing a thread like, okay, what's this story going to be?
00:05:05
Speaker
and then finding the gold that weaves together into that story. And I've always thought of it as that like making a statue out of a piece of stone. You know, the block of stone is the full interview and then you're chiseling it away piece by piece to the final product, which is, yeah, the end film. And it's always, the first cut of a film is always too long. It's always like, if it's going to be a 10 minute film, it's always like, I don't know, 15 or 20.
00:05:35
Speaker
And then there's a process of watching it. Okay, what makes sense? What is necessary? And I really like that actually, that process of like, how short can we make this? And just having the absolute essence of this story without the fluff. How do we get these points across in the most succinct and impactful way possible? And that's a really fun element of editing that I really enjoy.
00:06:02
Speaker
But yeah, I definitely like that image of like sculpting something from a big slab of stone. Yeah. Yeah.
Interview Techniques and Building Comfort
00:06:08
Speaker
And a question I often have when I'm watching your films and any documentary where the characters or the talent to use that terminology seem so at ease and seem so ready to kind of pour out their story. Like how do you.
00:06:23
Speaker
How do you put people at ease? What is the work that goes into your films behind the scenes that allows folks to open up in the way that they do? Because I pressed record and then I never know how to start these podcasts because I think something changes when I hit the record button. And no matter how much we've spoken beforehand,
00:06:45
Speaker
something changes and there's a stiltedness that can come across and I'm not sure how to get past that. It's definitely like I think half the job as an interviewer is to make people feel relaxed and it's interesting being on the receiving end of being interviewed because I'm much more comfortable in your position than doing the speaking. So it's been interesting to kind of reflect on that of
00:07:14
Speaker
of how I do feel a bit nervous and what am I going to say? What are people going to think of what I'm going to say? And I'm understanding, you know, every, when I do do interviews and I'm on the receiving end, I do understand what people are feeling when I interview them. And, um, it comes down to, I think building as much of a rapport beforehand as you can and not going like straight into interviewing, like,
00:07:42
Speaker
You know, we had a chat beforehand, we had a walk around to kind of ground here at Meliodora. That was really great rather than just like straight out of the cars in front of the microphone. Building trust with people is huge. And I think there's a real, it's something that a skill I'll probably be developing forever in directing is that building of trust and rapport with people.
00:08:06
Speaker
Because if people feel safe and they feel like you're listening then they'll keep talking. Like right now you're nodding as I'm speaking and it's really encouraging and I do that as well and I've had that feedback from people of like, you know, thank you for making it feel like you're really interested in what I'm saying because I genuinely am.
00:08:28
Speaker
And I think if you look engaged and you want to hear what people are saying, people generally love to talk. Like everybody's got a story to tell and having the opportunity to be in a film or on a podcast is really amazing for people. And it's something I really love about making the films is that it does feel like an exchange a lot of the time. We get to tell a story and make a film.
00:08:54
Speaker
but the people in the film get to tell their story and express themselves and share with their community in the world their ideas and what they're doing. So it does feel really beneficial. But it comes, yeah, at a foundation of kind of trying to be on the same page and building a rapport with people. And because our films go up on YouTube, which is so accessible to anyone with an internet connection, a lot of people that we film with have seen our films before, so they know
00:09:24
Speaker
what we're about, the style, the content, and they kind of get it. And that really helps as well with, if people know in the interview what you're looking for, that just helps them massively rather than kind of stabbing the dark at different ideas, throwing things out and seeing like, okay, you're going to nod at this one? Oh yeah. All right. So getting people on the same page, building trust and rapport with them is huge. But sometimes people just,
00:09:52
Speaker
can't relax and I've had that before and it's really tricky and I understand it as well because you can get so in your head about what you want to say to the world and you can put so much pressure on yourself to be succinct and an elegant speaker because you listen to all these other podcasts with people who just speak beautifully and you want to be like that and you can kind of trip yourself up. So right now I'm trying to not think too much about it because that's what I want people to do.
00:10:21
Speaker
I didn't write any notes or anything because I don't like when people do that because it's like the conversation is what you're aiming for. Yeah. Yeah. And every single time when I sit down with someone, I've sent them questions in advance. I've written those questions down on a little bit of paper in case I blank out and I need to reference, but I actually find, as you were saying, once you're in the conversation, it's like there's a container and I don't want to break
00:10:45
Speaker
that by looking at my notes or even like looking at the screen and how it's tracking and how the audio is doing because I feel like it interrupts something that's
00:10:53
Speaker
being generated in the conversation. But yeah, I feel that tension of wanting to curate questions or curate the story and direct it in a certain way. And then this renegade approach to just opening it up, open Slather Style and asking, you know, like a question that I love that my favorite podcaster, Manda Scott from Accidental Gods, she always opens her interviews with, what's alive for you? She asks that to the other person. And I feel like it,
00:11:22
Speaker
disrupts this idea that I'm coming to the interview as the interviewer and the host with an expectation of what wants to be said or what should be coming out. And it's actually just handing it back to the guest and saying, what's got your attention? What's got your curiosity? Like maybe you just did a PhD in like rock
00:11:39
Speaker
communication and sentience. And you really want to talk about that, but I'm asking you everything about, you know, like, is there something in your life that's just so, so juicy and interesting that's happening for you at the moment that you wanted to talk about off the top of the interview? No, I tried to come to it with no kind of expectations. I did have I did think about it a bit beforehand because I don't want to just sit here and babble. So I like, yeah, putting thought into it. But I think like you were saying before about kind of
00:12:09
Speaker
not wanting to break that connection by looking at the audio or your questions. It's the same thing like I always have questions written down for an interview.
00:12:17
Speaker
but I try to go as long as possible without like, it should be absolute plan B to look at those. Because if you do, you kind of, it becomes more of an interview and you're trying to hold this illusion of a conversation, even though it's hard when I've got the big camera with a microphone on it, people are wired up and sitting in this kind of unnatural form. If you can maintain eye contact and look engaged and speak to what's alive for people and kind of play on that, it can really bring out some
00:12:46
Speaker
amazing conversations.
Jordan's Filmmaking Journey and Inspirations
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah and I've learnt too that keeping it simple is really important and sometimes the questions that feel the simplest and the most you know the basic information about someone and their life is what really really connects us to those people and their stories and you know my curiosity and something I haven't really asked you yet even though we've spent a bit of time talking is when when did you start Happen Films and why
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, it was very much going with a natural kind of curiosity and feeling of wanting to do something meaningful. What really changed for me and set me down this path of
00:13:34
Speaker
of permaculture, sustainability, thinking differently about the world and the different crises we're facing was watching documentaries. So when I was probably 18 or 19, I was actually earlier in high school, we watched Bowling for Columbine. It was a Michael Moore documentary.
00:13:54
Speaker
just loved it and then I went out and found the DVDs of his other films and then just spent, yeah, I just became really engaged by these films because they just kind of exploded my mind and opened my mind up to what was happening in the world.
00:14:12
Speaker
And I remember after watching Fahrenheit 9-11, Michael Moore's film about the Iraq war, I remember watching that and just at the end of it thinking, I think I might even said to my mum, I want to be a documentary maker. I just remember feeling so impacted, like the fact that a story could make me like think about the world in this way. And then the same thing happened when I watched Food Inc, about the food system and then
00:14:40
Speaker
that kind of, yeah, blew my mind about what I was eating and it got me thinking around that. And so this whole like watching documentaries and got me reading and watching other videos and set me down this path. And I was into photography at the time, just like borrowing my grandpa's camera and taking photos of landscapes and echidnas and kangaroos and things. And I really enjoyed that and had played around with a bit of video stuff. But I thought I wanted to combine
00:15:11
Speaker
this kind of desire to contribute something good to the world like something meaningful because I'm watching all these documentaries about how terrible the world is I wanted to contribute something good and that was quite a vague notion because I didn't really know what that was I just like something sustainable so then you know I was looking at different projects that I could film and
00:15:35
Speaker
highlight and I taught myself filmmaking and I transferred some of the photography skills I'd learnt and learnt how to edit and things. But it wasn't until 2015 that I made my first film. It's called A Simpler Way. It's about a community in Gippsland, east of Melbourne, where
00:15:57
Speaker
It was 10 of us living on this property for the course of a year exploring what it would what it might look like to live with a One World footprint like if we consume the resources of one planet I kind of started happen films just before that after I met Samuel Alexander who is Professor at Melbourne Uni and he was involved in this project out in Gippsland and I was like, can I come and film it?
00:16:19
Speaker
He said, yep, all right. And a feature like film was born out of this kind of crazy idea of just like, I just had this burning desire to make a film and to make it about something good for the world. And so, yeah, started Happen Films. It wasn't a thing yet, registered the domain name and made a brand and then
00:16:41
Speaker
Yeah, I went there and filmed that film. And that's where I met Antoinette, who's the other half of Happen Films. And along with Sam Alexander, we produced this film. And that was Happen Films' first feature. And during that year, we put out a few short films as well. And just seeing the reception on YouTube was amazing. Just the beautiful comments and the number of views it was getting. It was like something people really felt like it looked like people needed these stories.
00:17:11
Speaker
and it felt really good to be making them and it was during that year that I came across permaculture I met David Holmgren and I interviewed all these amazing people and that continued to just open my mind up even further to some of these different ways of doing things and it just kind of hasn't stopped since then for the last almost nine years next month. Wow.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah. Well, what did it look like living the one planet footprint? Yep. The point of it was to be an experiment. And so we grew a lot of our own food. We bought organic food in bulk of things we couldn't grow. We built tiny houses out of recycled materials. And that was all great.
00:17:58
Speaker
but the most challenging part was the social dynamic of living in a community, especially in this kind of, people joked it was like eco big brother, because there were like 10 of us, only two people knew, one couple was
Exploring Communal and Sustainable Living
00:18:13
Speaker
there and then,
00:18:14
Speaker
Two of the people knew each other, but the rest of us were strangers, just showing up to this like five acre property in Gippsland, just ready to experiment. And I was filming it, which was an interesting dynamic as well of like living this challenging, at times challenging reality while trying to film it.
00:18:34
Speaker
And it being the first film I'd ever made, that was a challenge as well. But it's such an amazing learning experience, not just for filmmaking, but also just living in community. Like I moved out of my parents' house to go live here. I was living in my panel van, huge for a few months in a caravan and tiny houses. So like personally, it was a huge experience, but also the social side of things, learning to live with other people.
00:19:00
Speaker
was amazing and challenging. And that was basically the main learning of the year. It was like, if we're gonna live more communally, the social side of things has to take priority. Because it's fine to grow food or build structures, but if we can't get along, we can't communicate or have a shared vision, then none of that stuff really matters and it can't sustain itself.
00:19:27
Speaker
So that was, we gave it a go and we demonstrated some cool practices and the film has done really well online and people have been inspired by it. So it was a success, but it was a challenging year. What did you learn about social dynamics? What would you apply to that situation now in hindsight? I learned the value of facilitation. We had a facilitation
00:19:54
Speaker
ending to the year or a facilitator came in and we kind of like rounded out the year and that was great and it was like we should have done this at the beginning. There is something to be said about having natural leaders in a group. We had we kind of came to it and no one was the leader and so we're kind of all figuring out like what we're doing or who's doing what and that just slowed things right down.
00:20:20
Speaker
I think probably most of all a shared vision is the biggest thing. We did have a shared vision, but it was quite vague and you can interpret a lot. Everyone kind of interpreted that vision in a different way and that created conflict during the year. Like some people didn't want to use power tools and some of us did because it's like, we just need a toilet. And so everyone had different priorities and expectations for the year. Well, yeah, there were differences of like what we were trying to do and achieve.
00:20:49
Speaker
and different ways to go about it. So I think shared vision and having processes around when there are conflicts, all these things that like people who have tried communities or living communities currently all know and have worked on. I think having those in place first and not trying to make it up as you go would have just saved a lot of time and would have made the project more successful, but that's all good in hindsight.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah you mentioned the power of those documentary films you were watching in your earlier years and I know so many people who cite Food Inc as that cornerstone documentary that kind of changed their trajectory in thinking at least and eating. So it's one thing to be soaking up those images and stories and applying them to your life but what does it feel like to be the person
00:21:39
Speaker
telling those stories or kind of bringing those stories to life. And you've been doing that now for nearly a decade. Like, what's the impact on you? What have you absorbed from the films that you've been making? Great question. I think I probably would have asked something similar because, yeah, it's that like that that personal journey that we try to reflect in the films. Yeah, I can see parallels in my own life as well.
00:22:08
Speaker
It's almost hard to see how it's affected me because it has been my life for the last nearly 10 years and my personal growth as a person and my understandings of the world have happened alongside these learnings of filming with different people. It definitely has been an education for me and I kind of see like when we make a film it's
00:22:37
Speaker
It's something that I don't know. I've got a general idea around it. I think the ones I'm most excited about is when I don't know exactly what the film's gonna be or what the story is or what the learning is gonna be. But I know enough about it that I know it's something that I wanna tell. And then going into it, it's like a learning journey for me. And then the film is sharing that learning with the world.
00:23:03
Speaker
And I really like that kind of framing of it because that's why I'm still interested in making films, just because it's a continual learning journey. And then the more you learn, the more you know how much you don't know, of course. And so it's definitely like, yeah, every person that I've filmed with, I think has impacted me in some way and I've taken something away and it has shaped how I live and how I think about the world and I still
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's just kind of like part of who I am now is are these interactions I've had with people. And I feel so, yeah, it's a massive privilege and I feel so, yeah, blessed to be like have kind of an access pass to these amazing people like probably other filmmakers or photographers or podcasters out there know this of like, if you want to interview someone, it's kind of like a golden ticket to go hang out with them.
00:23:57
Speaker
And it's probably like half the reason I make the films is just being able to hang out with cool people. It's amazing what people agree to. Yeah. Yeah. In crazy situations, like a couple of years ago, we filmed in a prison because they were growing, prisoners were growing food in there. And I'm like, I'm inside a prison right now. This is so crazy. Just places that you'd never, or you hope you'd never, you get kind of access to. And people you get to spend time with who are,
00:24:27
Speaker
really busy. I get to have three days filming with them and get to hang out and learn from each other. It's one of the reasons I love making these films. How do you find these people? Because in your films there are these larger than life
00:24:42
Speaker
I'm especially thinking of in fulls and dreamers. And I forget his name, but he just sticks with me. It's like this little, little part of my heart that's given over to this gentleman in a shack on the side of a mountain who does everything analog. And you know, I think he issues technology for the most part. And that story I carry around and it must inform my behavior in some way. How did you find him? How do you find the people whose stories you bring to life?
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, that film you're talking about is Fools and Dreamers and the guy's name's Hugh Wilson. It's so funny, that film is by far our most popular, not necessarily, it is now actually view-wise, four million views. But it's the film that people know us by. It's like, oh, you know, happen films and they're like, huh? And then, oh, have you seen Fools and Dreamers? And they go, oh yeah, Fools and Dreamers. It's amazing how that film just reached
00:25:41
Speaker
so many people and I know why because Hugh is such an amazing person and what he and his team have done is incredible and speaks to so many people and we were just so lucky really to find that film. It's one of my favorite films we've made. We had 10 days up there at Hinaway Reserve filming and we found him through word of mouth and oh actually we had a vague
00:26:09
Speaker
notion that he was doing something up in the hills there and kind of heard a little bit about him because he does put out a newsletter and there has been a few articles about him. But it was somebody approaching us saying, hey, do you want to make a film about Hugh? And we're like, yep.
00:26:24
Speaker
He sounds great and we made this half an hour film called Fools and Dreamers and I think the word of mouth films, I mean most of them are through word of mouth now actually, now that I think about
Storytelling Arcs and Documentary Challenges
00:26:40
Speaker
it. In the early days it was like who's got a website or an Instagram page but then once you start meeting people and talking to them
00:26:49
Speaker
They just tell you about other people in their community or say, oh, you should check out this person. And they're actually the best ones because not everybody has an Instagram page who's doing something interesting. Hugh Wilson definitely doesn't. He doesn't have a computer. He writes everything by hand. And if you send him a letter or you send him a $5 donation, he's going to write back a thank you note. And, um,
00:27:12
Speaker
He's a character that has definitely lived with me as well, his story and who he is. And just that notion of stories living with us is so interesting. And I think just the whole kind of science of storytelling or history of storytelling and how it affects us is so interesting as well, because it's something like we're not doing anything new.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah, making documentaries on YouTube is a modern thing, but it's just another form of storytelling that humans have been doing since we could speak. But it is cultural too. And I don't know if you have looked into this or think about it, but I often wonder what is my cultural, the indoctrination that I've experienced as a kind of Disney raised millennial
00:28:03
Speaker
needing stories to have an arc, you know, like a beginning, a middle and an end and conflict and resolution and happy ending. And, you know, that's not every story and that's not every culture and like in Japan. And the reason I love Japanese and Korean fiction and cinema is because it can be this meandering thing or a simple slice of life or there are so many different ways to tell a story.
00:28:25
Speaker
Have you experimented with different kind of storytelling devices or just stories, as you were saying earlier, just unfold how they will as you're making the films? Like what are your thoughts on storytelling in general? One of the reasons I love documentaries is because
00:28:42
Speaker
you don't know how it's gonna end. Like every film, it's like, this is what it is probably gonna look like. Here's like the wide range of like what we're trying to achieve, but you never know exactly what the story is gonna be or how it's gonna look. So it's interesting in that way versus a narrative film where every shot is planned out and you're going via script.
00:29:02
Speaker
I don't know what people are going to say in the interview. I hope it's good. I hope it makes sense when we piece it together later on. I really love that about documentary making and that traditional Western narrative arc of the hero's journey is really interesting.
00:29:24
Speaker
But yeah, it's also interesting to know of other story threads or story arcs that don't adhere to that. Yeah, having grown up in this culture as well, I'm very much aware of that hero's journey. And I think it's super valuable. Like it does work. That's why all the big movies follow it. It's because it speaks to something in our brain that just works psychologically.
00:29:51
Speaker
But I think it's limiting if that's all we do, or we try to force a story through this preconceived stages, especially with documentaries, because there's not always enough drama to create this crisis point in act, beginning of act three or whatever. And you're not going to force, well, if you're ethical about documentary making, you're not going to force something to happen that isn't realistic. So unless it just happens to unfold perfectly and
00:30:21
Speaker
and you can kind of squeeze it within this framework, great. But if that doesn't happen, then you're gonna have to find a different way of piecing together that story. And that's what most of our films are. They're not a narrative arc like that. Fools and Dreamers isn't a narrative arc like that. So you could kind of like piece together little bits. There's definitely a structure to the films that makes sense. It's like you need to know who the person is at the beginning
00:30:48
Speaker
so you care about what they're doing later on. It's like, there's some kind of just logical things that make sense. And there's kind of a, not a formula, but there's like a flow that most of our films follow and that we like and people seem to like. I suppose like the one film where I've really tried to follow more of that traditional story arc is Ben and Bertha.
00:31:15
Speaker
That's a film we put out in 2023. And it's, I'll probably say this about every film, but it's one of my favorite films we've ever made. Partly because of that, we filmed it as it was unfolding, this project, as the drama was happening, which apart from a simple way, that first feature film, nothing's ever been filmed like as it's unfolding. It's always been like after the fact. So I was really excited to do something like as it went and documenting the highs and lows.
00:31:44
Speaker
And so like, just like personally as a filmmaker, that was a really fun project. And I found that really rewarding. And I really enjoyed thinking about, okay, how could Ben's story fit into this more traditional story arc? And it did, we made it do that. And I'm really proud of that. And I think it's a great film because of that, because of that story arc, because it works. Are you saying you sabotaged Ben at different points of the process so that there was a bit more drama?
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, we just, like, undid a few bolts in the machine so that would break and then we, yeah, stood off to the side, yeah, saying, here we go, camera's rolling. But it was kind of, Ben being the person he is made that film because he was able to articulate his journey. A different person, like, we probably wouldn't have made a film about because, like, they wouldn't have been able to potentially share it in the same way, but because Ben could
00:32:42
Speaker
talk about the highs, he could describe the lows and he was very articulate at telling his story. It made it work. And then there were all these like fortunate things where, yeah, some stuff didn't work when the machine was being developed, which created great drama in the film. And it's not like we're creating drama for the sake of it, but stories need
00:33:10
Speaker
Not conflict, that's like the traditional term for it is you have conflict and that's what creates an interesting story. I've heard a friend describe it as interest. There's some kind of tension there and that's where like the good stuff happens because that's where you can
00:33:30
Speaker
explore different themes and those themes that speak to us as humans. And I think that's why that traditional story arc makes sense is because it speaks to our human journey and psychology. And when someone's putting their life energy and their dreams into making something happen and it fails, we can empathize with that. And that's all filmmaking is, is trying to get people to feel something.
00:33:58
Speaker
Also what all art is, I suppose, is trying to invoke emotions in people and that's what good films do. It makes us feel things and when we can feel low and then feel high we get a contrast and that's where we go on a journey as a viewer watching it.
00:34:14
Speaker
And that's partly why we think a film is good because it made us feel something. And so when we can empathize with characters and do that, it creates for a really rich story. And we were lucky that Ben and Bertha did follow that trajectory. And there was a point where it was like, I mean, we didn't know the machine, spoiler alert, if you haven't watched Ben and Bertha, the machine works in the end. We didn't know it was gonna work or like we needed to wrap up filming. We'd been shooting it for like eight months and it was like, we can't afford
00:34:43
Speaker
we don't have the time to keep shooting it so I was like it had to kind of wrap up and there was a point it was like if this doesn't work we're going to have to make that part of the story and it's not going to be a happy ending of yay and that would have been okay as well because there's learning to be had in that and that's a different story but still valid. As you were speaking I was thinking of just how metaphorical these creative projects can be and how much they relate to
00:35:12
Speaker
our lives as the people, I guess, playing with the ideas and making something out of them. I'm wondering if you turned the camera back on yourself and you were filming your own life and your own whatever journey you're undertaking, what are the points of tension or interest? What would you say your biggest struggles have been in this sustainable life way that you've adopted? I think trying to do
00:35:40
Speaker
anything different in the world that we live in that you've always it's always going to be challenging and there's always been a tension between well even just like the fact of filmmaking is there's a lot of conflicts there we're using cameras that have heavy precious metals in them that are made in China we try to buy second hand when we can and so there are kind of ethics built into this but there's
00:36:10
Speaker
There's always, always conflict in it.
Ethical Filmmaking and Technological Dilemmas
00:36:13
Speaker
We upload to YouTube, which uses the internet, which is run on coal fired power. And part of me, you know, in the past I've thought about this of like, I just, I just don't want to have anything to do with, I just want to live without electricity in a cabin in the mountains. Using the technology that we have today to change
00:36:41
Speaker
to change our world has a place. That's not to say we should just do anything, you know, we should just constantly, you know, fly around the world because we need to, because we're doing something good or we need to use heavy machinery all the time because we're, you know, digging dams and swales or whatever. Like there is a kind of a limit to it, but I think there's, there is something to, like even right now where you, you know, using this equipment to tell these stories, but like with the films, I feel like
00:37:11
Speaker
they are worth it like the cost of making them to the world at the moment i think they're worth it just through seeing the impact that they have the comments we receive and the feeling like they're contributing something better so there is a cost but i feel like it's worth it and and yeah that that also
00:37:32
Speaker
Extends to kind of yeah, just life in general. It's always a challenge to live your values in the society we live in because it's not set up to make that easy and It's definitely been a journey and I think it will continue to be a lifelong journey of working more towards my values, but I'm always trying to work towards those and I
00:37:55
Speaker
It's so important to me to live as close as I can to those values and the ethics. I don't just want to make films because it's fun and other people can do that. It's really important that I'm trying to live this message as well. And I mean, if I wasn't making films, I'd be living this way anyway. So it's just what feels right and that's what I'm working towards. But yeah, you know, I get around in a diesel powered van to make films.
00:38:24
Speaker
And that feels like something that is worthwhile at the moment, but there's definitely a limit to that. I'm not just gonna drive constantly just for the sake of it because I can kind of justify it because I'm doing something good. I try not to fly, but I do sometimes when I have to. And yeah, I think it's really interesting this kind of this tension point. It's like with the story, this is where the interesting tension happens where
00:38:51
Speaker
there's this kind of gray area of being a hypocrite on the way to integrity and working towards something better. And yeah, I think it'll be a lifelong journey, but it feels good. And I feel like I'm on that path of living more aligned with the world I want to see. Maybe the hypocrisy and that feeling that dissonance is a necessary ingredient for the alchemy,
00:39:22
Speaker
to really transform things and feeling that's important, the discomfort. And I think there's definitely a place, well, I think diversity of responses is crucial and it's what needs to happen because not everybody is going to tomorrow move to a two acre property and grow their own food. Like it's just not going to happen. So we're going to, as we're living through this time, as systems are falling apart and we're heading
00:39:52
Speaker
for a different world. We're in this transition period, so we need to make use of the things that we have at the moment to kind of help us get through this time. And if it's worthwhile to use the car to do this thing because it's needed for a project on the land, then yeah, great. Like if you need to use the internet to make podcasts that tell a good story, then do that.
00:40:21
Speaker
I think trying to be too pure about it is just self-defeating and can lead to burnout. And it's probably why a lot of people don't even try to start living in a different way because they think I can't do it perfectly. So why even try? Yeah. Yeah. That's why I like showing the embarrassing stuff. And that's why I kind of smack my hand a little bit when I'm editing these podcasts too heavily, because I think there's something in offering the imperfections and the rough edges.
00:40:51
Speaker
to help invite people in rather than create a facade, like an impenetrable wall around these alternatives. And I don't think it's helpful to present illusions around what something involves or entails, but that's a fine line as well because people love aspirational things and pretty landscapes and gardens and yeah, I don't know how to solve that.
00:41:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I suppose the art films kind of do that as well, like highlighting these like exceptional examples of permaculture properties or radically simple lives. But I kind of think about it like highlighting the extremes can, it can show like the extent of where you can get to, but it's not saying everybody has to be there.
00:41:43
Speaker
Like I'm hugely inspired by a guy named Ethan Hughes in the States who lives in a, um, who was living in a community without electricity, but now is living, uh, I think on a family homestead with similar values, no electricity. And there's, um, a great, if I can shout out another podcast, there's a great conversation series with him, uh, where he's, you know, he's on his landline phone. That's like the only technology he's got like modern technology. And he, yeah.
00:42:13
Speaker
I listened to a podcast with him back in 2015 and it was pretty life changing. There've been a few of these kind of key moments of like things I've read or people have met where it's been, I can remember that moment. And this was one of them of just hearing how radically simple he lived. And I'm still inspired by him. Even though I don't know if I'll ever live without electricity. I know there's huge conflicts in that. And I think a lot of time I spend a lot of time thinking about
00:42:40
Speaker
renewable energy and the issues we're facing around resources, and I don't know the answers, but there's something worthwhile in hearing the story of somebody going to that extreme, even if you don't do it yourself, even if you go half the way, it's better than not doing anything. Hearing those, seeing those exceptional examples,
00:43:04
Speaker
can provide the motivation to start on a path where you can start doing small things without needing to go.
00:43:14
Speaker
fall in the deep end, move to the country and grow your own food because that's not realistic either for people. And yeah, some people will just never begin trying to do anything different if that's the illusion that we put out there is this is what it means to live sustainably. Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea that kind of the capillary action of someone up ahead that kind of pulls us all along or, you know, if you want to get the goats into a new paddock, you take one.
00:43:41
Speaker
the others can kind of hear it munching on the luscious pastures and they'll eventually like mosey their way there. Yeah yeah I love that. Can I ask a somewhat taboo and off-script question? I mean you don't have to answer. Lay it on me. I'm really interested how you earn a crust and how you navigate the tension between like
00:44:01
Speaker
needing to make an income and needing to buy certain things, but also being deeply interested in like a frugal and degrowth style way. How do you do it? Like, are you funded purely through donation and Patreon or what does that look like in any way you're comfortable telling us? I think a lot of creatives and artists are interested in this area.
00:44:25
Speaker
No, I'm super happy to talk about this because it's really interesting and I get asked it all the time as well because people are like, how do you do this? You're putting out films for free. How does that make sense? And it's always such a barrier for creative people as well. And that's I feel so lucky that we have been able to make.
00:44:43
Speaker
living doing this and have been doing it for so long so long relatively to my 29 year old life but in the beginning it was very much like smell of an oily rag like no money like we made a simpler way the feature film for $11,000 which is unheard of for any other feature film normally
00:45:11
Speaker
it would probably be half a million dollars to make a feature documentary. And we could do that because it was like, yeah, first one, we didn't pay ourselves to do it. It was like just getting something done and putting it out there and seeing what happens. And when people ask me like creative advice around this is just to start, just put stuff out there and don't worry about trying to raise a huge amount of money to just begin.
00:45:39
Speaker
because that's always going to be a barrier and you probably get burnt out trying to raise the funds and never do it. It's better to just get stuff out there, find an audience and then build support from that. And that's what we did is we started putting out these short films. They were doing well in the beginning. We don't like $200 a month on YouTube and that like could buy a
00:46:01
Speaker
one terabyte hard drive every now and again I used to delete the editing files because I only had one hard drive and I couldn't store everything on there and the footage as well from early films I don't have that anymore because I couldn't afford another hard drive so now it's sometimes a pain when I need to like someone else for a certain export of an earlier film it's like sorry I can't like they're gone we only had two terabytes
00:46:28
Speaker
So yeah, there was a few years of that, like really kind of like doing other work as well to make it make it work. But early on, we started to get a few donations to do small crowdfunding campaign that only raised like five thousand dollars, but it was enough to get going. And then small donations from people.
00:46:48
Speaker
been a constant over the nine years and it's just been amazing and that was so grateful that people still contribute to us and on patreon and patreon's always been a since i think 2017 has been a a good kind of foundation for us but it's and yeah of course youtube ad revenue as well as part of the mix which is
00:47:11
Speaker
if we're talking about conflicts, is another one. Because we don't control what ads get shown. You might get an ad for KFC or you might get an ad for Greenpeace. It's totally variable, depending on you as a viewer. And we'd love to turn those off one day, but at the moment, they do provide too much of the revenue pie for the year. So yeah, it's another thing of like, yeah, it feels worthwhile to take that money to invest it into films to keep these messages going.
00:47:40
Speaker
but a few years ago we made a contact with a philanthropist Philanthropic Brothers from the Namaste Foundation and they helped us finish our feature film Living the Change with a donation of $20,000 New Zealand Dollars and that was like life-changing. I could not believe they would gift us that much to finish this film. It was so amazing and somebody else
00:48:10
Speaker
gifted me a MacBook Pro that they were ordering like, I don't know, 30 for their business that year. And they're like, oh yeah, I'll take another one onto your order so you could edit the film and just send it back in after you're done. And he like never wanted it back. And that was like, that allowed me to edit living the change. Cause I didn't have a fast enough computer. So like, and we can only do that because we had, we were putting stuff out there and building an audience and making those connections and people finding a portfolio if you want to put it like that.
00:48:41
Speaker
and resonating with it. And then when we asked for help, that came in. And yeah, one of the, one of the helps that came in was the Namaste Foundation, which is now the Biome Trust. And they last, at the beginning of last year, committed gifting us a hundred thousand New Zealand dollars for three years, which is just like mind blowing, really amazing. And is basically like the foundation of how we run.
00:49:08
Speaker
And I say it as a gift because it is a gift. It's a total gift. I don't ask for any input in the films or ask for anything in return. It's just like, we love what you're doing. Keep doing it. And yeah, so that carries us forward as a solid foundation. And then there's YouTube ads, which is variable and Patreon and everything in between. But yeah, I think that mix, that variation is really important as well. It's not just one.
00:49:38
Speaker
place that we get our funds. It's like a, yeah, a big different slices of the pie that make it up. Yep. And I suppose while we're on the topic, might as well dig a little bit deeper. You mentioned as we were walking back up the gully past the property that we're on, which is Meliodora, David Holmgren and Sue Danitz, 30 plus year old permaculture demonstration site that they paid seven and a half thousand dollars for back in the day. And it was covered in blackberries and nobody wanted it.
00:50:08
Speaker
But David saw the immense potential of this land. But we're talking about this at lunch the other day. I think the maybe at the time that they bought it, people were working for it was maybe one or two years or something to be able to save enough to buy a home. And now, of course, that's increased, I don't know, 20 or 30 fold. And you mentioned that you'll never buy land or you'll never be able to afford to buy land. And myself and another household who live on the property in exchange
00:50:38
Speaker
I think I can speak for all of us. We're not squirreling money away with the intention to leap from here into property ownership. I just don't see how I'll ever make that kind of money. So you making that comment piques my interest and I'd love to ask what you see in the future for yourself. If it isn't following that expected kind of path of land ownership, what's the alternative for you?
Radical Simplicity and Communal Living
00:51:07
Speaker
Yeah, so many people around our age that dream of owning land has kind of dissolved away. And I mean, then maybe there would be a potential like
00:51:18
Speaker
to go down the route of getting a mortgage. But it's just, I'd have to orient my life around doing that and I'd have to compromise so many things. I'd probably have to get a second job as well and I wouldn't be able to make films as much. And I don't want to own land that much. Like filmmaking is my like priority work wise. And I don't want to compromise on that to try to, yeah.
00:51:44
Speaker
raising a ridiculous amount of money to enter the property market and then be stuck to that for decades as we head into financial difficulties, global financial difficulties and resource constraints and everything. It just feels like a really uncertain future to be getting heavily into debt. I'd much rather have the freedom to not be in debt. And that's the advice I hear from experts like
00:52:10
Speaker
I've interviewed in the past who say basically get out of debt. It's one of the biggest things you can do. So not getting into debt is a great place to start. I have been in small amounts of debt interest free from friends and family and stuff in the past. Small amounts and that's definitely helpful and that's a huge privilege as well.
00:52:29
Speaker
But in terms of trying to raise yeah trying to buy a big property myself or anything It's not on my mind. And so the idea of sharing land with other people To yeah to have access to land is one maybe yeah buying into land with people if you know ten of us get together to put a small amount in to buy land or just even like a
00:52:54
Speaker
just living on land in a tiny house. I love the idea of the tiny house because it is some form of security in an asset that you can move around and it has value. And while you're using it, of course, it's your house, it's your shelter and everything. And so that you can get a certain amount of security from that without needing to own the land under it. But the biggest thing I want is to feel belonging to
00:53:20
Speaker
region to a piece of land which having moved around and having lived in lots of different places over the last few years I don't have that connection where we're sitting here in a landscape that you know I grew up in and so I have a connection to and that feels really beautiful and I'm really enjoying that and yeah I'd really like to cultivate that in some way and I'm interested in exploring and
00:53:47
Speaker
Yeah, talking to people about how they do that without needing to own it. I think in our culture, we've got this idea of we need to own things to have security. I definitely get that. And there's a certain amount of security that comes with it. But then I've also seen examples of people living in shared situations on land that have a lot more security than if you had a mortgage. One couple, shout out to one of our earlier films about Tom and Sarah who live in the Coromandel.
00:54:16
Speaker
in a tiny house they're still living there in a different tiny house on the land but they've had this relationship with the landowners for I don't know 10 12 years now and you know they're raising their family there and the landowners are getting older and they're kind of it's just like a beautiful example of how it can work
00:54:34
Speaker
It comes with its own challenges. It's much easier to just buy your house and live alone and not have to talk to anybody. But then I don't think that's the kind of, they're not the kind of skills we need for the future either. We need to learn how to get along with each other if we're going to thrive in the future or today, really. So yeah, exploring different land sharing arrangements is something I see for me going forward and trying to cultivate that sense of belonging
00:55:03
Speaker
and groundedness while still being mobile in my van, which I'm currently fitting out as my filmmaking rig, because I still need to travel to make films, but I want to have a place to come back to that I know my community and I know the land that I'm living on.
00:55:20
Speaker
Yeah, nice. You've got such a large body of work now that is happen films and I'm thinking as you offer that small glimpse into someone else's life, that shout out to a previous film that you've made. I'm thinking of all those stories and examples that you can draw on of people living really radical templates, really alternative ways. Are there any that spring to mind when you think of
00:55:49
Speaker
people just doing shit really, really differently. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, everybody we've made a film with, I've taken something from and found inspiring, otherwise there wouldn't have been a film made. But yeah, there are a few characters, a few people that really stay with me and I think about a lot. And artists as family, Meghan Patrick and Woody here in Dalesford are a
00:56:19
Speaker
huge inspiration ever since filming with them back in 2017. We made a film called Creatures of Place about their life. And ever since then, it's been like, how they live is kind of what I'm working towards, basically. It's like the standard of, it's like the lighthouse in the distance of like, oh, okay, that's what I want. That's something to look forward to. And I can see that. There's a long way there, but- You have to learn the recorder for a start.
00:56:48
Speaker
Yeah, got to play an instrument. Yeah, yeah. But like having having them as friends, I feel so lucky that I do get to call them friends and I do get to see them regularly and have them a part of my life because they're just a constant inspiration just there. It's not just how they're living so radically and growing most of their own food and they don't have a car, you know, it's also their
00:57:16
Speaker
their commitment to their values and ethics and also just their integrity to what they believe in. It's just, I find it so inspiring and I don't know, I've met many other people like that that have that level of integrity and also just joy in how they live as well. They're just lovely people and a constant source of inspiration. And I know they have been for so many people as well. That's one of our most viewed films.
00:57:42
Speaker
It still does really well on YouTube. And I know why, because they're bloody amazing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Being in their orbit in person feels really surreal and there is no discrepancy between how it feels to be around them in real life versus how I've seen them show up in their various, their own writings and work and then the documentaries and podcasts and creations of others. They're so genuine. And as you said, that backbone of integrity and
00:58:12
Speaker
they're like joyfully puritanical about things. Like there's no sense of snobbery or permaculture elitism, but they are very, very wedded to their values and principles. And then it generates all the stories and things that they share as well, like traveling around for free enriches their life in so many ways, even if it is really bloody inconvenient. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely recommend reading their book of their travels up north on their bikes.
00:58:40
Speaker
the art of free travel it's called. Yeah, they're just constant sources of inspiration for me. And as well, like here at Meliodora, Sue and David, same as well, live so simply, have contributed so much to their community and the world with how they live and David's writing and things and just obviously the permaculture concept
00:59:11
Speaker
But yeah, there've been many people, I'll give a shout out to the Guytons in the bottom of the South Island in New Zealand is Robin and Robert Guyton. They have a now 30 year old food forest. And ever since filming there, I was like, I want a food forest. Like I just love that model and the way they've gone about it in creating it so wildly and not managed in more like an orchard or anything. It's like, it's totally wild and evolving. And,
00:59:38
Speaker
They grow more wild with it as well. It's just like it's amazing kind of dynamic between them and the forest. And so that's like one day of vision as well is having a food forest and just being part of this forest that I've helped create. So you've completed two projects that trend massively online on YouTube, at least tiny homes and tiny home building and also van life and van
01:00:03
Speaker
fitting, retrofitting. I'd love to hear a little bit more about what you learned building a tiny home and then also what you're tinkering with at the moment which looks like a pretty, pretty radical van set up of your own. Yeah, so building the tiny house in New Zealand where Antoinette's now living is, that was like a two-year process and it was really challenging but it was so rewarding at the same time to
01:00:33
Speaker
We didn't build the whole thing. We built the interior, but we were part of the management of the whole build, of course. And trying to do it as ethically as possible was really interesting of just how hard it is. I felt like we did pretty well in using a lot of local materials, natural stains and oils and paints and natural timbers. But in the beginning, I was having visions of like, oh, we'd do it like 80% recycled materials.
01:01:04
Speaker
Maybe we could not have electricity in there. We just have, or maybe just a fridge or something. And then you start walking down that path and it's kind of like constant compromise from an initial vision. And you have to be okay with that otherwise you give up. But in the end, I'm really proud of what we created is a natural home. It's a healthy home using the best materials we could use.
01:01:32
Speaker
So that I think is definitely learning from that journey is like, you have to have your vision of living it, of building it as ethically as you'd like to, or, you know, align with your values and then be okay with, you know, compromising on those because you can only do so much in the system that we live in. Even though if you'd like to do it a different way and working with other people as well, like you have to, you know,
01:02:00
Speaker
We worked with builders who had their own opinions on things like they didn't want to use secondhand windows because of various reasons. And so, yeah, lots of kind of compromises, but also learnings of just like a building. I really enjoy building and I think if I wasn't a filmmaker, I'd probably do like natural carpentry or something. I love working with wood and learning those skills and measuring and yeah.
01:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, right angles and all that good stuff. And so that was a lot of fun. Learning more of those skills and now I'm transferring that to building out a van. I've just bought a big Ford Transit van that I'm converting into my home at the moment and that'll continue to be my home for the short term and adventure like film vehicle in going forward because I need a setup to get around and to make films.
01:02:55
Speaker
Uh, so I'm going into that as well as like similar ethics of trying to do it as many recycled materials as possible. And when I can't do that buying like the least like non-toxic materials or, um, or ethically sourced where I can. And there's always compromises and they have been already with, um, with working in a van. And, um, but there are, you know, something like I'm insulating it with wool, a hundred percent sheep's wool. And so that feels really good.
01:03:24
Speaker
but the wool was grown in New Zealand, manufactured in the States and sold here. So there's all these challenges with any material you find. There's never, unless you kind of produce it yourself or you know someone in your community producing it, there's going to be some compromise or challenge with that material, whether it is the cost. And that's the thing. If you want to do it well by quality materials, it costs a lot more. And it's harder to find a lot of the time than just going straight to Bunnings and getting
01:03:54
Speaker
anything made of MDF or you know just plastic crap and doing it which sometimes you have to as well sometimes you run out of money and just have to do that but because the van is so small I can prioritize good materials and take my time and try to do it as well as I can to be my home for the moment and then maybe one day my base to then build a tiny house out of
01:04:21
Speaker
But yeah, I really enjoy breaking up, working at the computer with building. So both Antoinette and I are working three days a week at Happen Films at the moment. We have worked full time mostly over the last few years. But I really wanted to have enough time to put into practice the things that we're making films about. Like I said earlier, I don't just want to make films about this stuff, I want to live it. And living it takes time.
01:04:49
Speaker
So if I'm working five days a week, then there's the weekend where I kind of want to relax or see friends. And then when do I get to make bread or preserve stuff or forage or, you know, I want to learn to hunt and fish and do all this stuff or volunteer on people's properties and things and learn from them. So having this balance of work and the rest of life is really important. And, you know, living simply enables that not needing a huge amount of money each week as well.
01:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, it allows me to do that. Do you think that's the trick, lowering your overhead so you can reclaim that time to indulge those things that are close to your heart? Yeah, I think that's probably like the biggest bit of advice is
01:05:34
Speaker
is to probably, if you wanna live more simply and you want to do more of these things yourself and be a bit more self-sufficient or community sufficient, is you need time to do it. And if you don't have to work as much, you're gonna have a lot more time to, instead of buying bread, you can make it yourself. So you're not needing to earn the money to do that. If you're eating better, you'll probably have to go to the doctor less. You need less medications and things that you're gonna have to pay for. So you're kind of swapping out
01:06:04
Speaker
doing one thing to earn the money to buy it to just like cutting out the middle process and just going straight to doing it yourself and then you get all the benefits of it's better for you, you got to enjoy doing it. You're not some just like kind of factory robot doing one task for most of your life. I don't think that's how humans
01:06:26
Speaker
Well, it's how we haven't lived until modern times of that factory model and the nine to five work week where we get specialized at one thing and then we do that most of our lives, which is great for the economy and you get a lot of shit done and you can make a lot of stuff. But in terms of like human wellbeing or even fulfillment, a lot of people aren't fulfilled in their work. And probably part of it is because of the repetitive nature of it.
01:06:53
Speaker
and the lack of time to do other things that bring meaning to life outside of work. Yeah, that's a really awesome thread. And maybe it's not even the repetition so much because a lot of the so-called menial tasks that we engage in to keep our life churning and the fires burning are necessary and pleasurable if you have time to do them and kind of sink into those, you know, the floor sweeping or the churning of the butter or the chopping of the cabbage.
01:07:22
Speaker
that's that can be a joy. I'm thinking of maybe it was Alain de Botton talked about you know if the if the end of the world is nigh like let it find me hanging the washing out and you know washing the dishes.
Finding Joy in Simplicity and Community
01:07:36
Speaker
I think what he's saying is
01:07:39
Speaker
all the things that we've maligned or kind of cast aside as the work of peasants and not the things of an involved human, that is the work and that is the source of meaning and it can be. Yeah. Yep. Because there are so many benefits to doing more things yourself, not just for sustainability reasons or trying to lower your carbon footprint, although that's a valid reason to do something.
01:08:07
Speaker
I think narrowing what you do to carbon emissions is, I mean, we could have a whole kind of discussion about the problem with this for fixational carbon and the narrow-mindedness of solutions that come out of that, but it can be similar to your own life of like, oh, no, it's not worth carbon-wise to do this. I might as well do that. Well, what about the joy you get to do it? Maybe you could make it and trade with a neighbor. Like there's so many benefits that we don't even think about, or maybe even we'll know
01:08:37
Speaker
by doing these things in our lives. And I think that's, I really have a problem with people thinking that like, what we do in our life doesn't matter. And that every solution relies on something top down and large scale. And I understand where that thinking comes from because the issues we're facing are massive. And so, of course, the solutions have to be massive. And it becomes,
01:09:05
Speaker
culture as well of our industrial society of like big single solutions to a problem when you know permaculture principle of small and slow solutions just resonates so much with me and so many people and I think that's that's where we have to go because those small and slow solutions I think are is what is going to get us through the future and it starts with doing simple things like
01:09:35
Speaker
preserving some carrots you grew. Or, or even just going for a walk in the bush. Like if you don't even do that, because you don't have time, you might think, oh, how's that going to save the world? But if we kind of push everything through this filter of how it's going to save the world, we'd probably never do anything. Because, and I've probably done this in the past as well, and it's very easy to think, kind of trying to calculate impact in your mind of like, should I do this or that?
01:10:04
Speaker
And you can't imagine how actions in your life are going to impact you or the people around you. So I think starting small is where we have to start and it's where the real solutions are, I think. Yeah. And slowing down does a lot of, has a lot of benefits if you are talking about, you know, if you are making the calculations, slowing our pace means we just use less. And sometimes I speak to friends who are on
01:10:31
Speaker
know crazy health kicks and stuff and they are like running a bunch or doing you know heaps of exercise and burning way more fuel and then eating more I'm like you could just do less of everything and then you're not using if you're looking at that as to in terms of like consumption and
01:10:45
Speaker
at inputs and outputs and stuff. Like there's so much to be said by pairing things back and doing things slower and being smaller because that in itself, I see is activism. You know, going for a walk, if that's your source of entertainment or like watching the chickens or binging, you know, the next episode of goat TV. It's like, you're not using anything in that, but you are giving something to yourself. Yeah, living more slowly. I've got this real resistance to, and it was part of what got me thinking differently about the world as well.
01:11:15
Speaker
coming out of high school and looking at what I was gonna do, just yeah, working that nine to five job to pay a mortgage and just like the pace of life and how much you have to work, it just didn't appeal to me. And I just like, I think it's just getting quicker and quicker, the pace of life. And especially now with interest rates going up and people's financial situations becoming more difficult,
01:11:45
Speaker
people have to work more and more and it's like, where does this end? People working seven days a week and there's that phenomenon in Japan where people just die on the train because they're like overworked and it's like, is that where we're heading? Because the machine can never, the machine of our society can never be fed enough that we have to keep growing and growing and producing more and more and we have to keep working more and more to do that. It's just a constant cycle of
01:12:13
Speaker
consuming the earth and us as people. And so the world would be a much better place. Like, you know, the whole thing of doing a four day work week that's coming online. Great. Like do more of that. Like if we just produce less stuff and people work less, that would have a massive carbon
01:12:30
Speaker
reduction if we're going to look at it like that or resource, just produce less stuff. That's a great place to start. Yeah. And even like we were speaking earlier about health challenges and I see a lot more chronic health problems and people feeling like they can't achieve in the way they want to because of some limitation around their energy levels. And I wonder if there's a piece for me or something in there for me
01:12:56
Speaker
around these challenges, like the cost of living, the fatigue that we're all feeling, there's something to be attuned to and listened to and actually reframed as a gift in all of these, like all of the intersecting crises. Maybe there is the opportunity to surrender to them in a way and actually respond rather than trying to kind of go into battle and solve. We can actually, yeah, have that like surrender
01:13:25
Speaker
that then kind of diffuses the problem. You know, like even if we have this limitation placed on our energy reserves and our state of health, well, maybe that does mean we can't all work like robots anymore. So by listening to that, we actually start to change the systems because they're just not possible. It's just not possible to sustain. It's just not possible to make the money to buy the dream that we think we all want. So yeah, I don't know, maybe it's because I'm
01:13:54
Speaker
innately a quitter or something. I like the idea of, of, of quitting some of these, these delusions and aspirations and expectations that we have of ourselves and what life should be and like giving in and letting that be the medicine. Yeah. Listening to our bodies. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's why. And I think it's cultural as well. It's not just economic. The idea of the hardworking person is
01:14:23
Speaker
part of our cultural myth and it's very it's really valued and you can see that with the like our generation millennials kind of wanting to work less and have more quality of life and not really caring about money and the difference between that ethic of like the boomer generation who
01:14:44
Speaker
who worked to provide for their family for this kind of different vision of like the American dream or the Australian dream or whatever. And that's kind of fading now with our generation and younger because we're in a different world than we were when the boom generation was in the workforce. But that ethic has stayed that like, yeah, work hard. And that's like what it means to be like
01:15:12
Speaker
decent human being. There's some real like interesting identity thing tied to work and people tie their life to it. And a lot of the time is probably to try to avoid other areas of their life. Um, they focus so much on work and that's how they get value and like a feeling of self worth. And so kind of unpacking a lot of this stuff in our own psychology,
01:15:41
Speaker
is part of the equation as well, not just like monetarily simplifying our lives. It's unpacking some of these ideas of like what a good life is, what a meaningful life is, what can I contribute to the world? Because all these things still exist within everybody. We all wanna have meaning and feel valued and feel like we're contributing. And currently that, we get meaning from buying a lot of stuff. We get meaning from like going up the corporate ladder, getting promotions and you know,
01:16:11
Speaker
a lot of material based rewards whereas we can get meaning through giving to community or feeling belonging and I think that's part of our cultural transition as well is that change of values and vision of what a good life is and that's the kind of heart of the filmmaking as well is like it's throwing out ideas of like
01:16:33
Speaker
different ways of living, like this is what the future could be or how about this or what resonates and kind of just seeing what we could do differently. How would we like to close this conversation? Maybe a double headed question around what you hope for the future and what you see as realistic, what is coming down the pipeline in your eyes, but also what is possible.
01:17:06
Speaker
I spend a lot of time thinking about the future and have done over the whole course of filmmaking and I feel really lucky that I've been able to have that mental space to be able to do that and I've been able to interact with people like making a simpler way interviewing people like David Holmgren, Nicole Foss, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ted Trainor, like all these people who
01:17:33
Speaker
I just got this first-hand education about what was happening in the world and so that gave me this kind of basis to then think about a lot of this stuff. I've definitely gone up and down, had some periods of just feeling quite low about the direction humanity is heading in. It still feels like that actually.
01:17:58
Speaker
If you're paying attention, I think it's kind of hard not to. If you care about what's happening in the world, and you're seeing species going extinct, and hearing about how climate change is gonna affect two billion people in the poorest part of the world, it's hard not to think like, feel low about that. And I've definitely sat in that too long sometimes, of just that kind of despair,
01:18:27
Speaker
The COVID period brought that on as well. Partly because I thought, oh, maybe this will be a moment that like we kind of collectively get our shit together. It might be a bit of like a wake up moment. I think a lot of people might've been thinking that. And then when that didn't eventuate and everyone was just trying to get back to normal, that kind of, yeah, I found that quite depressing. But I am an optimistic person.
01:18:57
Speaker
but I still hold this kind of like, yeah, worry about the future in a lot of ways, but also have a lot of faith in people. And I think we can create a really beautiful future and present. I mean, this is stuff we need to be doing now. Like, I feel like we're in collapse, if you wanna call it collapse. It'll be interesting to see in a few decades from now,
01:19:27
Speaker
historical moment the pandemic played, maybe that was a point at which everything just started, you know, resource use started to go down. Yeah, who knows? Like maybe that was a bit of a shift, a turning point in the world. Because things feel different after the pandemic, I think. So we'll see how that unfolds. But I feel just seeing what's happening in the economy, seeing what's happening around the world,
01:19:54
Speaker
Climate-wise, environmental-wise, we're in collapse of what we've come to have known as normal. And a lot of these systems we've relied on are crumbling. And the health care system is one of those. And that's quite worrying of people waiting months to get surgeries or not even be able to get seen. Or even the education system, hearing from teachers and things of how that's not working for kids now either. It just feels like a lot of the systems that worked for a while are now
01:20:24
Speaker
aren't suited for the world we're in. And so that's why I feel like we're in a collapse kind of stage. And this might take decades to unfold. And I don't think it's going to be something like overnight zombie apocalypse scenario, which is like it's a fantasy thing that probably comes out of like movies and I don't know, cultural ideas around that Mad Max kind of thing.
01:20:49
Speaker
I see the future kind of like how Nate Hagans, to shout out another podcast, in his podcast, The Great Simplification, that term is what he describes as this process of collapse, of not everything turning to a zombie apocalypse, but
01:21:10
Speaker
simplification of the world and the systems because of resource constraints and pollution limits the limits to growth and all these other planetary boundaries we're reaching those now we've passed a few all these things are starting to pinch now and I think yeah things are going to unfold in stages things might get a bit better for a while but ultimately the the curve of growth is on the way down and that's going to have huge implications for how we live
01:21:40
Speaker
at the same time as we're probably gonna be facing more pandemics in the future and all these other challenges, social challenges and things. So there is a lot to kind of think about when considering the painting the picture of like the world we're in. But I think what keeps me going and what makes me feel inspired, still and hopeful is we've created these systems so we can create new ones.
Optimism for a Sustainable Future
01:22:06
Speaker
And I've met enough people and I've seen enough projects
01:22:11
Speaker
to feel like it's just there. Like we can just create, like as Charles Eisenstein puts it, a more beautiful world if we decide to. And if we get our shit together, work together, I don't believe governments are gonna swing in and solve all these problems with us. Cause they're part of this system and no one person or group of evil people is in control of the world systems. We're all in this super organism, this machine,
01:22:41
Speaker
And there are competing interests of business and government and things. And I think we as communities and individuals have to do our best to build the world we want to see now. So when these systems start to crumble and people who don't get it at the moment can see an alternative and get involved and do it themselves. And I think that's how the future will unfold is it'll be challenging, but I think it can be beautiful.
01:23:12
Speaker
We just have to build it. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing stories from the more beautiful world. Our hearts know it's possible. I feel like that is happen films. So like the heart and soul in your work is just, yeah, so clear. Um, so thank you so much for doing that. And then also being here today and chatting with me really, really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks so much, Katie. It's been a pleasure.
01:23:38
Speaker
It was great to be able to ask Jordan so many questions, to hear his inner workings and creative logic, because he and Antoinette are physically invisible in the documentaries they produce, which in an age of selfies and cameras turned back on ourselves is really rather refreshing. If you don't already, be sure to subscribe to Happen Films on YouTube.
01:24:00
Speaker
because they actually have a collaborative series coming out really soon like in the next couple of weeks which is to me similar to an advent calendar for uplifting content because they're going to be releasing a new film each month it's called something beautiful for the world and you'll find the trailer and all the info on their channel if you're willing and able you can also support them on patreon
01:24:22
Speaker
Patreon is a sweet way to pay creatives like Jordan and Antoinette for their unconventional but utterly necessary work of restoring human culture, which should be a career but isn't. I subscribe for $8.50 a month, which is less than the price of a bag of mushroom compost.
01:24:42
Speaker
And today I've actually been re-listening to a very animated couchside interview that I conducted with Beck Lowe quite a while back now. And Beck is everyone's favourite permaculture teacher. Zero apologies or caveats. She's just bloody amazing. She shared so many gems and so much wisdom that I really can't believe I've sat on this chat for so long.
01:25:05
Speaker
So if you're up for a deep dive into tending the land as a single lady, leaning into the role of livestock grim reaper and letting your feet roam wild and free, come back next Monday. Thanks for listening, rescale you later.