Earthship Freo

RESEARCH STATEMENT

Earthship Freo (Elliott 2023) is a feature documentary about a community of squatters and activists in Fremantle, Western Australia. For over a decade they lived off-grid in a row of seven, brightly painted, abandoned houses. Calling themselves “Earthship Freo” this intentional community occupied the houses with a plan to save a number of mature and endangered Tuart Trees that were tagged for destruction to make way for the widening of a main road. The Department of Main Roads, who owned the houses, tolerated the squatters for many years, until 2019 when they issued final eviction notices so that the road works could commence. This documentary is an historical record of a Fremantle community, and a celebration of environmentally conscious community living. It is also a case study of how participatory production techniques can be used to create a collaborative and personal documentary film that is a model for effective communication in an era of climate crisis.

The filmmakers are academics with professional backgrounds and experience in television, documentary production and journalism. Dr Michelle Johnston teaches screen arts at Curtin University and Dr Mignon Shardlow teaches at Notre Dame University in Fremantle. The film was made without funding and with help from friends, colleagues and students.

While this is a small and local story, it is a complex one that is being played out in many other parts of the world where progress often comes at a cost to the natural world and to communities that are powerless to stop it. Documentary is an exploratory form and we had many questions to explore as we spent several months shooting in the houses, anticipating their demolition. How does a community with so little material wealth have the capacity for generosity and to care for disadvantaged people in a way that mainstream society does not? How can we live more sustainable lifestyles – as the squatters do? What drives somebody to be a front-line activist and why are activists vilified rather than celebrated for their courage and passion? Why, when sustainability is high on the public agenda can a government department destroy endangered trees without being answerable to the community they serve?

Participatory Documentary

Participatory documentary production is usually defined with reference to documentary theorist, Bill Nicols, who describes six documentary modes of representation (Nichols 2017). Filmmakers such as Michael Moore (for example, Roger & Me 1989) and Louis Theroux (for example, My Scientology Movie 2015) are described as participatory because they, the filmmakers, feature in the documentary. It is their voice that tells the story of the film, and the audience understands the argument made by the film through their engagement with other characters in the film. The type of participatory production techniques employed by the Earthship Freo filmmakers are different. For us, participatory production techniques are employed in the same way as many non-Indigenous filmmakers who collaborate with First Nations people. (see In My Blood it Runs (Newell 2019), Heart Coming Home (Goldrick 2017)). Those who might traditionally be called “subjects” of the film become collaborators. Rather than making a film about First Nations people, the non-Indigenous filmmaker makes a film with them. Participants benefit from the film’s production and maintain control of their own story through all stages of production (Johnston and Forrest 2020, Johnston and Shardlow forthcoming). We collaborated with the Earthship residents in the same way. They were invited to contribute media to the film, to exercise editorial control over the story told by the film, and then participate in screening events for the film. Funds raised at a Fremantle screening of the film were donated to environmental advocacy groups who were supported by the Earthship community.

Producing the documentary in a participatory way delivered both benefits and disadvantages that are evident in the finished film. Good documentary storytelling employs the same strategies as drama film narrative. The aim is to engage an audience, entertain them, and cause them to respond emotionally to the characters and the story. Like drama, documentary needs structure, compelling characters, conflict and a climax (Bernard 2016). Because the filmmakers did not have complete control over the Earthship Freo story, there are elements of the story that are less compelling because of the participants power of veto over the edit, and because of our commitment to them to tell a story that is respectful of the community. The story does not have the climax we anticipated because a peaceful compromise was reached between the squatters and the Department of Main Roads. The story of Earthship Freo is a compromise between the filmmaker’s desire to tell a compelling story, a truthful story and a story that is agreeable to all the participants.

There were also several advantages of our participatory approach. The first was that the film got made. As environmental activists, our participants were wary of the media and some were experienced media players. They recognised the merit in our participatory production techniques and gave us access to the community. With time, we developed a trusting relationship with the participants and the result is a film that is character driven and personal. The audience is given the kind of access to the community that allows them to observe a way of life that would be unfamiliar to most people. The Earthship Community is a model for sustainable living from which the wider community can learn valuable lessons.

Storytelling

Stories about climate change are ubiquitous and the challenge for filmmakers, journalists, and activists is to reach an audience and engage them in a story that is, more often than not, negative and frightening. Research suggests that effective communication about the climate crisis should be wary of the “hope gap” (Arnold 2018) and offer solutions (Gunster 2017). The Earthship story offers both hope and solutions. Sustainable living and supportive communities are essential to our future, and the Earthship Freo community is evidence of how that is not only possible but also rewarding. They demonstrate how community can speak back to power, fight for the environment, and win. When the climate crisis seems overwhelming, the Earthship residents are an example of how each of us can make a difference.

As good storytelling is essential for a successful documentary, so too is it valuable for effective climate crisis communication. “Stories, opposed to polemics, have qualities that enable them to move people” because “people take sides on an issue, but it’s much harder to take sides on a story” (Nash and Corner 2016, 233). It is one of the things that differentiates a successful documentary film from the vast collection of “content” available on the internet (Eichhorn 2022). A good story needs a hero, and our main protagonist is just that. Simon Petterffy is a lifelong environmental activist who has  sacrificed family, material wealth and physical safety to fight environmental destruction. Heroes, it seems, “are far more compelling than either villains or victims in crafting strong narratives” (Gunster 2017).

Activism

Our production of Earthship Freo was a small contribution to the growing body of films categorised as “social impact” documentary. Western Australian filmmakers such as Jane Hammond (Black Cockatoo Crisis 2023) and Kathy Henkel (Laura’s Choice 2020) remind us of how hard it can be to take “an issue that is really important and bring it to the surface amongst all the other noise. How do you compete in this noisy environment? Imagery and storytelling is how you do that” (Johnston and Shardlow forthcoming).

Documentary participant, Simon Petterffy, believes the presence of our camera in the houses prior to demolition contributed to the Department of Main Roads meeting his demands to plant hundreds of offset trees for each mature Tuart tree that was destroyed. He is hopeful that the film will inspire future generations of activists (Johnston and Shardlow forthcoming). For us, as university academics, our experience will be taken into our classrooms where students learn the skills to tell powerful stories that contribute to change.

Conclusion

Participatory documentary has its limitations and requires a deep commitment to the people who are at the centre of a story. Earthship Freo is a model for effective communication about climate crisis because of its capacity to connect with audiences on an emotional level and avoid the polarising debates that so often arise from this issue. Importantly, a decade long piece of Fremantle history that was about to be destroyed was documented – this community was worth remembering. They will inspire and inform future generations of activists and sustainable communities.

PEER REVIEW 1

Earthship Freo (Elliott 2023) is most successful in its offering as a historical snapshot of an activist community of squatters who were also protecting Tuart trees in Fremantle, Australia. The film material would be useful to anyone studying activist movements or that community in particular. As a film, it serves as an interesting case study of participatory documentary filmmaking. The mode, as defined by the filmmakers, allows “Those who might traditionally be called ‘subjects’ of the film [to] become collaborators.” As the author points out in their research statement there are disadvantages to this approach, as can be seen in the final film. Because the community of activists were wary of filmmakers, it seems this collaborative approach may have been the only way to gain access to the community – I think that the problem came largely from the fact that the majority of the film was talking head interviews. To have this kind of material make up the bulk of the story and give those same subjects editorial control creates a piece that feels largely like someone from within the community produced it, in this way it did not feel very different from much of the other media we see related to activist communities where the story promotes a particular way of life and ethos.

There is nothing wrong with this, but it limits audience engagement outside of that community. Perhaps a solution to this would have been longer scenes and more “fly on the wall” style footage, allowing characters and locations to reveal themselves through action rather than explication. In this way audiences could experience life inside the community without being told by the community what that life is “about,” the film could still serve as an important historical document and the editorial control would be more in line with which parts of their life they wanted to share, rather than controlling what message was being transmitted. From a filmmaking standpoint, more screen time could have been dedicated to the trees themselves and the atmosphere of the community. In this way location could also have served as a storyteller, and offered more unique vision from the filmmakers alongside the community they were filming. 

PEER REVIEW 2

This is an important film for all the reasons the author has identified in the research statement. The documentary film is engaging, surprising, inspiring and takes its audience into a world that from the outside would be seen (and as the film shows, could be considered by outsiders) as having no worth – and manages to convince us otherwise. The lifestyle and ethos of the characters and community depicted does indeed present an alternative to the mainstream understanding of what an ethical and sustainable society might look like. It brings to mind the book A Banquet of Consequences: Have we Consumed our Own Future? (Das, 2015), wherein the closing chapters outline the kind of future society humanity may be forced to adopt as a result of diminishing resources. This film paints a portrait of what that future, and a future society, could possibly look like if humanity cared for one another as a priority. The “participatory” aspects of the filmmaking process, whereby the subjects are active collaborators in the creation of their story, is a natural fit for this film and the subsequent challenges and strengths in taking this approach are articulated in the research statement.

The film and the research achieve what they set out to do. And like all good documentary films, we, the audience, cannot help but care about the people whose lives we have been shown a window into. For this reason, I would like to know what the outcome was for the FERN community kitchen. They were presented as the heart of the community in bringing disparate people together to support, nurture, sustain and share with those in need. The depiction of the trees being planted by way of a positive conclusion to the loss of the original trees and the community, with no mention of the fate of the “heart” of the community, was a noticeable absence. Even text on screen advising on what their current outcome was would have been good to include. 

The documentary film is an exploration into the lives, ethos and motivations of a group of “outsiders” who are driven by a desire to live sustainably with the environment and their fellow humans. In so doing the film portrays an alternative way of being that, unlike the mainstream, offers a different way of seeing the world, ourselves and each other. This raising of social awareness and civic-minded consciousness is a key aspect of the documentary tradition. The research statement presents the pertinent questions the filmmakers had in documenting this story, that their documentary film audience - as responsive citizens - are invited to ask of themselves. 

RESPONSE TO PEER REVIEWS

Thank you to the reviewers for their generous and constructive feedback. Considered and informed responses such as these are valuable to us as filmmakers.

Earthship Freo (Elliott 2023) was produced by a small team, without a budget, and in whatever time was available to us as we attended to our full-time academic teaching jobs. As suggested by the reviewer, this kind of participatory production would have benefited greatly from a more observational approach and from, ideally, the filmmakers embedding themselves in the community for an extended period of time. When we first approached the community about making the film our attention was directed to the FERN community kitchen that had already been given an eviction notice by the council. We produced a short advocacy film about FERN that was screened to the Fremantle community and shared on social media. This gained us trust with the residents, but by the time we turned our attention back to the houses they had also been given eviction notices, many of the residents had left, and time was running out. “Explication” was our only option. Having said that, the film includes some memorable visual storytelling such as the scenes of FERN, the bush doof and the houses’ destruction.

Our participatory approach offered significant time for interviews with the Earthship residents. More oral history than interview, the participants were given space to tell their own story and as a result the film is a character driven and nuanced representation of a complex community and its history.

The documentary shows the demolition of the FERN community kitchen, along with all the houses. It explains that the Fremantle Council could not provide a new home for the kitchen that was fit for purpose, and in 2024 FERN is still homeless and no longer provides a service to the community. The people we meet in the film have all moved on to new lives, although it took two years for Jason to find a place to live – an all-too-common experience for many people in Perth who find themselves in the midst of a housing crisis.

REFERENCES

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Johnston, Michelle and Mignon Shardlow (Forthcoming). "Earthship Freo: A case study of the potential and limitations of participatory documentary filmmaking". In Communicating a World in-Crisis, edited by Simon Cottle. Switzerland: Peter Lang.

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Newell, Maya, dir. 2020. In My Blood It Runs. Documentary. Closer Productions, Kids Film.

Nichols, Bill. 2017. Introduction to Documentary. 3rd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.