Courtesy of Elements Tour
DCL
Professional kayaker-turned-documentary-filmmaker Seth Warren has been touring the country with his latest film, Nature Propelled, which weaves the elements of nature with various sports that depend on them in an attempt to illustrate the harmonious relationship that humans can have with the earth if only we try. I had a few minutes to chat with Seth on his way from the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival in California onto his next premiere in Colorado.
Planet Green: Can you talk a little about the film, for those who haven't seen it?
Seth Warren: It's sort of a metaphor for what society can do in terms of utilizing the natural energies on the planet. The film shows how different sports are connected through the life cycle of water, but also how the athletes in the film work sort of in harmony with the elements—by doing these sports, they understand the way that the river works, or the way the air works.
For my first project, we ran the longest petroleum-free road trip in history, using totally plant and animal oils to get us from Alaska to Argentina on the Pan-American highway. This film spins off of that: we've done new modifications on the truck (called Baby) to incorporate the elements of nature, so we're using sun and wind to charge the battery in the truck, which we use as electricity for all kinds of things. The film uses the truck to teach all the lessons we've learned along the way, and some really funny characters (and athletes) to essentially demonstrate how natural energy is formed through the sports that they do.
For example, we're talking about wave energy through surfing, and go through the seasons and the water cycle. We demonstrate hang gliding and how hang gliders elevate themselves in the air, and we do a bit about wind energy and how wind is formed. Then moving inland, the seasons change, precipitation drops into the mountains, and we go through this whole skiing adventure, and go into ski resorts and interview some of the most sustainable ski resorts. Then we follow the rivers back to the ocean with kayaking. We talk about the positives and negatives of renewable energy, and relaying how these athletes do different things with energy to society in general.
The film also shows examples of people doing various things like taking the sun's energy, heating up jugs of water outside of their house during the day and using that energy at night to heat the rest of their house. Just really simple things
PG: It seems like with a lot of sports, there is not a connection between athletes' use of nature with a sense of respect or sensitivity for the environment. Do you touch on that at all in the film?
SW: In my opinion, the most inspiring thing to do is to get out and celebrate nature and be in it.
Besides the fuel it takes to get to these places, the sports in the film are fairly leave-no-trace. I'm trying to show with this film, we need to take that exact same approach to our energy use on this planet. And there's all = different ways to do that—it's the difference between building large dams that disrupt ecosystems for hydropower, for example, and other methods of hydropower that you can have without disrupting the flow of waterways.
PG: If you visited any of the same places on both road trips, did you see any changes in terms of environmental consciousness between the first trip and the second?
SW: We crossed paths with one community, San Pancho in Mexico, it was one of the first schools we ever visited on the first project (Oil and Water). We went back during Nature Propelled and wanted to see what had happened since we left. It was really inspiring to see: in two years, the school started a recycling program. It's not real common to see recycling programs in Mexico—as the sustainability movement grows, it seems like recycling in these third-world countries seems one of the first things to catch on, as it was in the U.S. years ago. But it was cool to see how, not only recycling in school, but they had built a playground out of repurposed parts, and had made an entire park in the middle of city completely out of recycled things—and a recycling center that's been established to recycle everything from plastic to glass to cans.
Beyond that, the school—it's called the Costa Verde International School—has actually gone as far as to build a plan to be completely solar and wind-powered. The school's actually being built as we speak.
That's just kind of the message I like to show through the films. It's a really uplifting theme. Both films that I've made and any film that I will ever make will focus on the positives rather than the negatives. Yes, climate change is happening, but also yes, there are a lot of motivated people out there that want to do something about it.
