Paper short abstract:

With clips from a documentary and an experimental fictional feature film, using puppets and live actors, a filmmaker explores the relationship between filmmaking, the environment, culture and traditions of a remote fishing village on Sado Island.

Paper long abstract:

I have spent the last eight years documenting a small fishing village at the remote Western tip of Sado Island. With only forty residents, most of them in their eighties, the community is slowly heading towards collapse. But the village is rich in local knowledge about farming, fishing and the environment. Sustainability and even growth might be possible here, given a different trajectory or new way of thinking about regional viability. Whilst making the documentary, I began to explore how art could be used to preserve or even re-invent the village, possibly by creating a regular theater or performing arts festival there. But due to Covid this was not possible and in August 2022 I turned the theater piece into an experimental fiction film, based on local legends and stories and using Bunraku size puppets with live actors. (The area has a local puppetry tradition.) The resulting film is a kind of “scavenged” or “salvaged” film that attempts to express something of the spirit of the village and the area in a poetic form. I will show clips from the finished film and explore ideas from contemporary philosophy (Markus Gabriel and Alva Noe) whose ideas about the power of art to change thinking have influenced my own thinking as a filmmaker. Is there a model here for a different kind of filmmaking practice, more rooted in place and growing organically from the land and the community? Could this cottage industry film practice help us re-think regional economies and lead to sustainable growth?