Published by Helen

Nov 27, 2008

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Paris Environmental Film Festival

PARIS ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL Luc Plamandon

This yearly event, presented by Jean-Paul HUCHON, President of the Ile de France local government entity, was held in the Cinema Pagode, an art-house oriental-style cinema niched next to the Conseil Régional.

With an international jury headed by Québec musical producer and song-writer Luc Plamondon, the event included 89 documentaries, fictions and shorts from 37 countries for its 26th event November 19 through 25th.

Debates and encounters were held with such eminent personalities as Canadian environmentalist Hubert Reeves who talked about his new book « The 4th Choc » and with Danielle Mitterand, widow of former Socialist French President, who runs a Foundation for oppressed peoples and accessibility of water to all.An Amazon Indian tribal Chief from Acre, Brazil, was also in attendance, sporting the traditional long feather on top of his head.

Organised by the Région Île-de-France, this specialised festival is intended to make the public aware of environmental issues and get them to reflect about them and act. Since 1982, films dealing with sustainable development, pollution, poverty and preservtion of cultual heritage etc. vye for cash prizes.

Although this year's Award List does not mention them, my favourites of the many mind-boggling films are the following :

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BRENDA HEAN ? tells the remarkable story
of Brenda Hean – one of the first leaders of environmental political
party the United Tasmanian Group – whose fight to save Tasmania’s Lake
Pedder lead to her mysterious disappearance in 1972. Thirty-five years
later a filmmaker undertakes a quest to discover the truth. The quest
takes us on a journey into the landscape and eccentric community of
Tasmania, painting a portrait of an inspirational woman whose
environmental values still resonate today.

Camping at Lake Peddar before it disappeared

Unlucky World's First Environmentalist Brenda HEAN couldn't save Lake Pedder.

Brenda Hean was one of the first
leaders of an environmental political party in the world. She tried to save beautiful outstanding Lake Pedder in Tasmania from being engulfed by the largest
hydro-electric power scheme in the southern hemisphere.

In 1972, Brenda
and her pilot, Max Price, were on their way to Canberra in a light plane to petition the
Australian Prime Ministerpreserve the Lake which had one of the most pristine white beaches ever seen. The plane vanished without a trace. The battle for Lake
Pedder is lost. The plane was never found.

The documentary's director, Tasmanian filmmaker, Scott Millwood, received a visit from an environmentalist who handed him a huge envelope saying "Use this for good". The contents were Tasmanian Police
Files detailing the secret, behind-the-scenes story of the plane's
disappearance - a story never made public.

Millwood is offering a $100,000
reward for information that solves the mystery. In the film, we see Millwood searching for how and why she
disappeared, retracing her footsteps, interviewing those who knew her,
summarizing his own and other's conclusions about the motives and circumstances of her death.

"This is a fascinating doco, every bit as intriguing as a mystery thriller.

Brenda
Hean was not a radical young rebel of the 80s; she was a middle class,
middle aged woman of the early 70s, who played piano and dressed better
than the politicians she was hectoring about the plans to flood Lake
Pedder. That alone would make hers a fascinating story. The fact that
she and the pilot of a small plane heading for Canberra on a protest
flight disappeared without trace amidst the heat of the protests, adds
highly flammable fuel to it.

The story drags in Tasmania's
politicians and the police whose violence towards environmental
activists is indistinguishable from that of the angry forestry workers.
Nice place, this. Scott Millwood uses the broader view of Tasmania's
green battles to put this story in context. He also uncovers
suggestions that it was the pilot, womanizer Max Price, not Hean, who was the
real target in any proactive move to remove the plane and its
passengers from the sky.

Or was it plain greed - many people
stood to make big money from the hydro scheme. The mystery remains. It
may just have been an accident. No matter, it's become a myth."