How to Change the World

Date: 26/01/2016 Times: 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

In 1971 a brave group of young activists set sail from Vancouver in an old fishing boat. Their mission, to stop Nixon’s atomic bomb tests in Amchitka, a tiny island off the west coast of Alaska. It was from these humble but courageous beginnings that the global organisation was born. Chronicling the untold story behind the modern ecological movement, this film shows how eco-warrior Robert Hunter and a group of like-minded friends would be instrumental in changing the way we view the world and our place within it.

From the outset, Greenpeace understood the power of the visceral image — the ‘mind bomb’ as Robert Hunter called it — and always kept the cameras running. The film’s secret weapon is a trove of 16-millimeter films made by Greenpeace members at that time. With growth, though, came control issues and infighting. Depending on the interviewee, either the perfect became the enemy of the good, or the trusted betrayed the mission. The film winds down as Greenpeace reorganised in 1979 with a new international structure, and its founders took different paths. Robert Hunter died in 2005 so could not take part in the making of the film.

It has won environmental awards at the Reykjavik and Sheffield International Film Festivals.

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