From ‘Emergence’ Magazine…. From ‘Wild Justice’….
by Bernie Bell - 08:04 on 17 September 2024
From ‘Emergence’ Magazine….
“Documenting Shifting Landscapes
A Conversation with Award-Winning Filmmaker Kalyanee Mam
“Stop moving. Stop rushing. Stop thinking. Start feeling. Start sitting. Start listening. Start tasting. The moment I stopped—that’s when the stories flowed. And that’s when my ancestors spoke to me. And when my heart was open enough to receive all the gifts, the treasures that have always been there.”
For twenty years, Cambodian-American filmmaker Kalyanee Mam has been telling, with singular tenderness and heart, stories of her homeland’s cultural and ecological loss, and the lifeways that persist there, rooted in humble and reverent connection with the Earth. She has shared many of these stories with us on Emergence over the years, including Lost World, a story of a community in Koh Sralau whose livelihoods are threatened as the mangrove forests they depend on are ruthlessly mined for sand to build an “eco-park” in Singapore.
Ahead of the premiere of the final film in our new Shifting Landscapes Film Series next week, which explores how Kalyanee’s work reawakened her ancestral connection with Cambodia, we’re releasing a special conversation between Kalyanee and Emergence executive editor Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. This interview, recorded live at our exhibition in London last year, introduces us to Kalyanee’s intimate and kinship-led storytelling style—she talks about the multi-year process of creating Lost World: how she embedded herself in the Koh Sralau community and learned to listen with her heart to its stories of erasure and destruction; care and stewardship. She shares experiences of filming across her homeland that gifted her “a taste of the land”—from coming to know the subtle rhythms of tides and twilights on Koh Sralau’s Lover’s Island over the course of years, to entwining her life with those of families living in the sacred, but increasingly industrialized, Areng Valley. Contemplating the power of grief to open inner spaces of transformation, she speaks about the importance of stories that both bear witness to destruction and continue to hold love for the Earth.
Shifting Landscapes Film Series
Directed by Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Now screening exclusively on Emergence, our new Shifting Landscapes documentary series tells stories of what it means to reawaken and hold love for the living world as the places we call home are changed by ecological destruction and irreversible loss. In The Nightingale’s Song, British folk singer Sam Lee joins the nightingale in song as development threatens it with extinction in the UK. Aloha ‘Āina explores a love for and of the land embodied by Native Hawaiian poet Jamaica Osorio as she fights to protect the sacred Mauna Kea from the construction of a thirty-meter telescope. And The Last Ice Age journeys with Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason to the melting Vatnajökull glacier as he searches for the myths large enough to hold the vastness of the climate crisis. The fourth film, Taste of the Land, featuring filmmaker Kalyanee Mam, will premiere next week."
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From ‘Wild Justice’….
“Today’s newsletter contains a link to more information on our legal challenge of overgrazing on Dartmoor, a quick look back at both the weekend of workshops that some of you were able to attend and at Hen Harrier Day at Carsington Water, good news on a legal challenge we supported in Scotland, a note of lack of response from Natural England about disturbing events on Thursley Common, a reminder of a petition we support and an unusual mention of money.
Wild Justice and over-grazing of Dartmoor: we've written a blog which starts to explain our legal challenge in more detail. We're waiting for developments, but this is, we feel, an important challenge. We'll be writing more about it as time goes on. But here is our latest blog post - click here.
Wild Justice at the Wild Service in Action workshop: Wild Justice recently joined organisations including Right to Roam, Trash Free Trails, River Action, Wild Card and Lawyers for Nature to put on workshops to develop skills in community-based action for nature. Our Ruth Tingay delivered a guide to recognising signs of raptor persecution, attended by 50+ people.
Feedback from a participant: “'I'm still processing a lot of what I saw and heard over the weekend but have already started working on one of the issues I had in mind when I signed up for this workshop. I wanted to be more informed to advocate for nature at the planning stage of a new local development - and got a lot of practical advice in the talks and from other people I was chatting to over the weekend. I wasn't sure what to expect but any expectations were exceeded. Congratulations to all for such a successful event.'
Places were limited at this event - we'll be thinking about how to give more of you the opportunity to attend future events.
Hen Harrier Action’s ‘Action for Wildlife Day 2024’ on 10 August:
Thank you to Hen Harrier Action for organising this successful event. There were lots of people and lots of them were long-lasting friends of Wild Justice (such as Gill Lewis, pictured above). We were wrong about one thing though - it did rain, quite a bit, early on, but then the sun came out.
You made a difference: Wild Justice donated £5000 to a legal challenge about use of herbicides in a forestry scheme in Scotland and a wider range of issues - click here - and we think that many of you chipped in too. The good news is that the grant and approval for this forestry scheme have been cancelled. We're sure that isn't the end of things (and damage to the site has already been done) but it is a very big step forward. The only way this would have been halted was through legal action. Thank you!
Disturbance on Thursley Common: we are still pressing Natural England for information on their role in permitting a film crew to use Thursley Common, Surrey, in the bird breeding season and at a site with other vulnerable wildlife. It feels a bit like nailing jelly to the wall but NE should be sending us more information in the next week. It can only raise suspicion when a public body takes so long to produce an account of what happened, and why, on land that it manages and has a duty to protect.
Petitions: the UK Parliament Petitions Committee is being reconstituted with new members and a new chair. Although this is party conference season we're sure there will soon be new petitions to put in front of you.
In the meantime please consider this petition:
· The Pesticide Action Network and others (including some very big NGOs) launched a petition calling for a ban on the use of harmful pesticides in urban areas some time ago. When we mentioned it to you in July the petition got a surge in signatures - thank you! You might have been on holiday when we last mentioned it, and we have people coming and going as subscribers all the time, so there may well be more of you who would be up for signing it now. The petition stands on nearly 18,500 signatures as we send out this newsletter - click here. We're sure that your support can make a lot of difference. 20,000+ signatures by this evening?
Money: you may have noticed that we have started two legal challenges recently - on overgazing of Dartmor and (with Badger Trust) the Badger cull, and yet we haven't asked you for any money to fund them. That's right, and we still aren't asking for donations but it is likely that we will in the not so distant future. We're grateful to you for your moral and financial support and we try not to ask for money until we know precisely what we will spend it on and how much we need. So, no ask from us again this newsletter.
That's it for now - we'll be back in touch soon with more!
Thank you,
Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay)."
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