During the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21), the colossal façade of the French National Library will be transformed into a projection screen for a live video feed of penguins that French filmmaker Luc Jacquet will transmit daily from Antarctica. “We’re going to screen it at the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand in Paris to raise awareness on both penguins and the emergency situation in Antarctica”, says Jacquet in his ECO//COP interview. Raising awareness for climate change is one of the primary goals of Film4Climate, a program initiated by the World Bank’s Connect4Climate. “We chose to focus on film because it has great powers of persuasion”, stresses Lucia Grenna, Program Manager at Connect4Climate.
Since its launch at the beginning of 2015, Film4Climate has participated in many industry gatherings and film festivals, where it forged a broad range of partnerships, including one with the French network Ecoprod, founded in 2008 by Catherine Puiseux, CSR Director, TF1 Group and Olivier-René Veillon, CEO of the Ile-de-France Film Commission, whose mission is to green the Film and TV industry in France. Ecoprod provides Film and TV producers with various tools to reduce their carbon footprint. “About twenty productions test or use Carbon Clap each month, which results in about 100 to 150 evaluations per year”, outlines Puiseux.
Olivier-René Veillon espouses the view that sustainable production must become standard operating procedure. “Now the carbon calcu- lator exists. It is easy to use. It is free. Anybody can use it”. Meanwhile, however, there are dif- ferent carbon calculators in different countries.“I think it’s inevitable that we will eventually have a universal, standard protocol”, says Grenna.
This issue will be addressed at the Audio-Visual Conference on Sustainable Productions in Paris on November 25, which Ecoprod and Film4Climate are hosting before COP21 kicks off. The #Day4Climate Action will take place then, and environmentalist/filmmaker Slater Jewell-Kemker will screen a thirty-minute seg- ment from her debut feature film, An Inconve- nient Youth, which tracks the rise of the global youth climate movement. Jewell-Kemker began shooting the film when she was fifteen years old.
Another highlight is the Sustania Awards, which recognize sustainable production solutions throughout the world. Innovative projects from nine different countries were reviewed by an international Awards Committee chaired by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Hollywood actor, politician, and environmentalist is convinced that the media has a powerful role to play in the fight against climate change. ”Through films, television, and all media outlets, we must continue to deliver the message that solutions are out there and they are happening now”, points out Schwarzenegger. “I believe films in particular can really inspire and make people want to take action”.
Credit: Connect4Climate, EcoProd.
