Endless Vital Activity

Damon Gameau

September 03, 2020 Accept & Proceed Season 1 Episode 6
Endless Vital Activity
Damon Gameau
Show Notes Transcript

“What does it look like on the other side of this crisis? Does this have to be a story of depravity - or can it be an opportunity to create [a better future]?” 

In the latest episode of Endless Vital Activity, David Johnston speaks with Damon Gameau, actor and filmmaker behind ‘That Sugar Film’ and his most recent release ‘2040’. 

David and Damon discuss why the film industry is getting it wrong when it comes to climate change, the importance of providing children with a utopian vision of the future, and how having a fundamental understanding of human psychology can create a better future for both people and the planet. 


 

David [00:00:00] Well, welcome, Damon, thank you so much. How are you today? 

 

Damon [00:00:06] Not too bad. Not too bad. I think it's as we speak, there is so much going on in the world that it's hard to not get swept up in it sometimes. But I'm finding enough time to step away and take a deep breath and try and sit with it all. And there's alot of listening going on right now. 

 

David [00:00:27] Absolutely. I think it is strange times. It's a very special day, actually, it's my daughter's birthday, funnily enough. So I just wanted to say happy birthday to Mini before we get kicked off. 

 

Damon [00:00:40] Happy birthday, Mini

 

David [00:00:43] So I'd love to kick off by talking about your newest film, 2040. I watched it pre UK release at a viewing at a place called the Welcome Collection here in London late last year. And you may remember you did a Q&A after the call. I'll admit I was a little worse for wear, having experienced the most raucous studio Christmas party we've had in years, along with a talented design team we've assembled here at Accept & Proceed, we also seem to have found some particularly able drinkers. But your film was a fantastic hangover cure, Damon. And what I found so powerful was that the grounding framework of the film was one of optimism. It's a real antidote to the visions of the future that we see perpetuated in culture. You really shifted the conversation away from a fear-based narrative to something you call fact based dreaming. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

 

Damon [00:01:34] Yes. So, I think there's a lot of answers to that question. I think first and foremost, that this idea of the future that we're going to inherit and what are the images that we're putting into our subconscious, what are the images that we're showing our children about what their future might look like or entail. And I think if you look at most Hollywood films, there is a world depicted that is devoid of any nature. Humans are invariably living in slums and they're being chased by robots. And I don't think a lot of us necessarily want that future. And I just thought, you know, this is these images are very powerful. We know how powerful the images are. And especially in films or in other narratives. And I thought that we sort of needed to have an intervention on that. We needed to say that, you know, there is a different version of that future and we can have abundance and nature and make sure that we're also putting that as a potential pathway and showing that to our children. The other element came from speaking to some psychologists as I was researching the film. And from my own experience, I found myself really disengaging with climate change in general that, I had one day where we had a bleaching of our coral reef here, a Great Barrier Reef. And I found myself halfway through the article reading about it, just moving on to a different article. And I, I stopped and sort of thought, why couldn't I connect there? I am a father. This issue deeply matters to me. But I actually couldn't finish the article. So, I spoke to a couple of psychologists and they really talked to me about the limbic system in our prefrontal cortex and how, especially when we're seeing this constant torrent of negative information, that it does activate this part of our brain, the limbic system. And when that's activated, it shuts down the prefrontal cortex, which is where we problem solve and where we think creatively. And plus, we also have this window of tolerance where, there's only so much that we can take. We only have a capacity for for a limited amount of information that's negative and overwhelming before we do feel a bit paralyzed and disengaged. So, I just thought that was really interesting in the fact that that's the main tool that we've been using to try and get people on board with sort of climate and other ecological problems. And I thought, wow, there's an opportunity here to reframe this as, you know, what does it look like on the other side of this crisis? Does this have to be a story of depravity and sacrifice and giving up things? Or can it be actually an opportunity to create better communities and have healthier food and get people excited about this new world and bring them on that way? So that's really how the research process began. And funnily enough, as soon as I started researching, it took about eight months and spoke to about 100 different academics and scientists and economists. I found my own spirit suddenly lifting. I suddenly thought, gee, people need to know about this. This is incredible. This person is doing this remarkable thing in some other part of the world. And these are the stories that just aren't penetrating our mainstream narrative. They're not the type of addictive algorithms that our social media latch onto because they don't have the element of outrage so that they get promoted. It's what's Rebecca Solnit talks about the hope in the dark. This is away from the main spotlight lurking in the shadows where we're not looking, is all this extraordinary solution focussed thinking that's going on, so I just wanted to make a film that shifted that into the spotlight, but was also very careful to not make it an exercise in really bad parenting by saying, hey, honey, you know, here's what the world could look like in 2040, because the film is a letter to my daughter. Here's a sort of Pollyanna utopian vision of the future. So, I created this idea of fact based dreaming of saying everything I show there in 2040 has to exist now. It has to be an extrapolation of what we already have, as opposed to what might come in the next 20 years. And the lovely takeaway for people when they've seen the film, is that right, we actually have everything we need. We're not waiting for a magic bullet or technology to save us. We've got everything we need in this very moment. We just don't have the political will and we've got to get the vested interests out of the way, which is no mean feat. But I think it has been very reassuring people to people who have seen it that we can do this. And I think that's the first step in taking action is to know that it's possible. 

 

David [00:05:54] Absolutely. I feel it's funny you mention the coral there, I feel like I had exactly the same experience after reading or during reading an article about it, and I was so sort of dismayed.  I just moved on and wanted to kind of get away from the article and probably didn't finish it myself. And I think that people often feel like climate change is an insurmountable challenge. But what I admire about the work that you're doing is that you would knowledge those feelings but believe there is no value in them, as it just shuts down as you say. Visioning and imagination are crucial, and you have to give people things to fight for rather than fight against. Is that right, Damon? 

 

Damon [00:06:31] Absolutely, and especially if we think about how saturated our landscape is now with sort of destructive information or destructive news, and maybe you can understand 20 years ago or even at the time of Inconvenient Truth, that sort of shock value of a film around climate was really affected because it was new information. But now people have heard it so many times. People are so overwhelmed. They're all busy at work, we're all live in these frenetic lives to then expect someone to go and sit in a cinema on a Tuesday night after a busy day at work and watch a film about how bad things are, or how the reefs dying or whatever it might be, the polar caps are melting. We've got to be strategic because that's a big ask for them. So, I think rather than just making these films or telling these stories that are sensibly eighty-nine minutes of how bad things are. And in three minutes on the end of that -'here's the things you can do', I think we have to start flipping that and still show the problem, but actually show the problem within a solutions framework. So, you spend maybe the first five or ten minutes setting up your problem and then you really look at the solutions and the answers to it to get people excited, to motivate them, to give them encouragement. That's what we require as humans. And I remember reading it doesn't seem very related, but I read Victor Francos 'Workmen Search for meaning' and what really struck me was the prisoners in these concentration camps in World War Two and how when they thought that they were going to be released at prison, when the guards would imply that that might happen, their entire spirits lifted and they got healthy. They stopped smoking that comb their hair, they start doing exercise because they had this goal they were working towards. The minute they found out that they weren't getting released, all the vices came up. They let themselves go again and the spirit absolutely declined. So I think we've got to be smart about that. We've got to know that as humans, we get up every day because of the possibility of a better future. So why aren't we doing that in our storytelling? Why aren't we doing that as a collective? We set goals as businesses, we set vision boards for ourselves, we're encouraged to do that, you know, picture yourself where you want to be, all that sort of stuff. But we don't do it collectively. And if we're not doing it collectively, then we are marching into someone else's future that is doing that thinking right now and invariably it doesn't have us in mind. It's perpetuating a system, extracting more and more to please a small group of people. So I think we've got to re- empower ourselves and take back that imagination and that dreaming element, and have these conversations right now about what 2040 is going to look like because it's actually getting designed in the present moment. And if it's not us doing it, it's someone else. And I think it's important for everyone to realise that. 

 

David [00:09:04] Absolutely. I think your film was a was a profound reminder to myself, actually, how much the perception of the future affects our actions in the present. I know you spoke to an environmental psychologist about the long-term effects on our creative thinking when we got bombarded with negative messages constantly. What surprised you from that exchange? 

 

Damon [00:09:27] A few things, I think that first of all, just how our capacity as human beings- that's what surprised me. That we often talk about people talk about this sort of this fatigue people get with so many issues and it's so overwhelming. We do have incredible scope to absorb a large number of it. But we've kind of reached this point now in this intensely complex system that we've created, that there are just so many things to to be concerned about. We're seeing it right now as we speak, this sort of racial tensions flaring up around the world, statues being pulled down. We've got an obesity crisis and health crisis everywhere. We've got income inequality problems, we've got soil degradation, we've got overuse of chemicals, have got acidified oceans, we're using too many resources. I mean, there's just so many things that it reaches a point where we all just think this is too hard, it's too existential. And so, the psychology for me was really interesting there that that's not the way to keep doing it. And that we are we are creatures that have evolved to tell stories, and yet we think that facts and graphs and logic are the things that are going to convince us. And I've even spoken to scientists that have sort of thought, well, the next graph will be the one where people actually get it and they'll see that that curve and they'll think, oh, right. Yes, we need to take action- that's never how it's worked. I mean, we have to be smarter there and understand the psychology. What moves us is stories and what moves us of the stories of the things that we all have in common. So, we take it out of this sort of intellectual sphere. Words like anthropogenic and negative emissions, all those things that sound clever but don't actually move people. What moves people are stories about their health or about the future of their children or about the strength of their communities. The things that we all value, no matter what political persuasion we lean to. So that to me was quite profound. And then just that relationship between the limbic system and the prefrontal corte, and it's either one or the other. We sort of go back and forth, if we're activating one, we shut down the other. And we really have a world that is just our limbic system is activated in every momen now- the way we sort of geared our communication tools. We're constantly in this fight or flight mode, we're seeing it right now, this narrative war that we're stuck in, where all these stories are proliferating, all these different theories and conspiracy theories, there's so much going on. And people are trying to prove that they're right and the other person's right and we're stuck in this limbic response the whole time. So, no one's moving forward and actually planting trees and getting things done and solving the problems we need to solve because we're stuck in that fight or flight mode and we're not in the prefrontal cortex, which, again, is where we move forward and we problem solve. So, I think this is a huge issue across a range of different topics. The psychology of storytelling is now more important than ever and I think we've got to get people out of that limbic response and we have to encourage them and excite them and get them to start dreaming about a better world for all of us, because we all share so many things in common but our tools are just prying us apart, polarising us and this tribalism that is emerging is just so counterproductive for where we need to be going. 

 

David [00:12:46] I'm interested Damon, with your kind of raised awareness about how the brain works. You know, do you catch yourself in real time realising that, you know, this is a limbic response? This is the prefrontal cortex response, are you able to kind of manipulate your own responses with a raised awareness? 

 

Damon [00:13:04] Yeah, to a degree, I think I, you know, if I spent too much time on Twitter, for example, I often go there for news and I find a really valuable tool. But if I'm there too long or go down a rabbit hole that probably I haven't been cognitive, I do is suddenly pull myself up and think, oh, hang on, I'm losing hope here, I'm feeling quite despondent or I'm picking up on the anger here and I think over the five years I've been doing this film and researching, I've learnt the resources, the websites, the people I turned to for the majority of my news information then makes me feel the possibilities and the hope and the encouragement and the incredible design workshops that are going on and the conversations around systems thinking and what the next system might look like and how we transition. To me when I spend time in that realm, I feel better as a person and more hopeful for my daughter's future. But I don't think enough people understand they exist because I think a lot of people are subconsciously scrolling through their Facebook, not understanding exactly what's going on in terms of their brain and these are are intoxicating and powerful algorithms that have been carefully designed to take us down those rabbit holes. And, you know, I really think that's we're at a critical moment for that. We have an information environment that is is probably as polluted, if not more polluted than our ecological one. And I think unless we can agree on shared truths and shared values, then democracy is really in trouble. And so, John Glub was an English historian. He looked at the collapse of different civilisations. And he mentioned that what was in common was they did lose this shared truth. And we're absolutely staring at that right now. And we've lost faith in all sorts of institutions and even what a fact means anymore. So, it's very hard to move forward on these critical issues like climate change and other topics. So I do think that this psychology, this even this 101 version of it, needs to get out there quite quickly just to make people just aware of what's going on and to try and get them to think a bit more critically and discerning before they're sharing information or to understand and check where their information is coming from. 

 

David [00:15:17] Part of your mission with both your films, so that sugar film, which my kids love, by the way, and enabled me to open up a conversation around sugar that I'd really struggled to have previously, and now they're always asking me, does this have sugarr, you know, does that have sugar, they're really interested, but also 2040- they both have been about arming people with insights into political and capitalist tactics and how they're being manipulated. Whether it's the food industry or climate change deniers. Having these open conversations about the problems we've been given to solve is really critical, isn't it? 

 

Damon [00:15:55] Yeah, and it's wonderful that you can have those chats with your children, it's fantastic and I think it speaks volumes to how articulate this generation is. And I'm the same. I mean, obviously, you've seen the film. We interviewed about 130 kids around the world from the ages of 8 to 11 and I was just blown away with sort of the language with which they used and how up to speed they were on so many of these issues, especially the ecological ones. And that was troubling at times that they did know what they knew, but they also felt very galvanised in their willingness to make change and be involved in that change, which was very hopeful and still gives me hope today. But yeah, to your point, I think having explored sugar and the sugar industry and the tactics used by the sugar industry, and now looking at the tactics used by the fossil fuel industry, and even as we were saying before that even social media- I think we need to understand that these are all symptoms of an underlying issue, which is the flawed architecture of a system that we've created, that the reason we have obesity and fatty liver disease is because a company needs to play this game, which says we must be rivalrous and deeply dominate other brands. And it forces them to employ hundreds of PHD scientists to understand how foods can be manipulated, how they affect the dopamine response in our brain, the mouthfeel all the science there, so that they can put out a product with the exact amount of sugar in it that will get people hooked and will buy more of it.  And they know that if they put a product on the shelf that has slightly less sugar than a competitiv, then the competitor will take that advantage. So, they are engineering these metabolic diseases because of the underlying flawed architecture of our system. The same with the fossil fuel industry, they spend billions of dollars building offshore rigs or the tar sands in Canada. They want to recoup that money, so they will do whatever it takes, including creating huge disinformation campaigns, lobbying politicians, hijacking because they want to win at that game. And as we spoke about, this is exactly what Twitter, Facebook, they're now in that conundrum as well. They need to place shareholders, they need to keep growing, so they've got to promote these algorithms that pick-up outrage and collect more likes and shares because that generates data which they then sell and that makes them a ton of money. So, so often we look at these issues individually and we think, God, how can we fix them? And really, it's like playing whack a mole and it keeps popping up and we keep trying to whack it. But we need to understand that the functionality of the system just isn't working for us. And we need to somehow start talking about how we pivot this, from this sort of competitive domination extraction machine that we've got, to one that is more decentralised and distributive and symbiotic and interconnected. And that's kind of what I feel that my work's been for the last 5 years is trying to find those solutions, or examples of those solutions. And I'm here to tell you that they're out there and people are working on them and they're incredibly exciting, and they tap into a part of us that isn't just the selfish win at all costs, slightly sociopathic element, which, yeah, of course some of us have. But we also have this beautiful, altruistic, shared collaborative element to us that the system doesn't reward in this moment. It's not incentivised, it kind of promotes that other part of us and then we think that's just who we are but I think as many of us, even in this Covid period, you know, the sense of community that erodes, the slowing down, the helping out. Yes, there were troubles, but for the large part, people did a wonderful job of respecting each other. You know, the silent skies and the quiet streets and the closed shops are evidence of that. But fundamentally, there is care for each other because we're willing to completely dissolve our traditional structures in a matter of weeks for the greater good. So that's what I feel is going to be part of the rest of my life and I think people are starting to realise that, that we are in this extraordinary moment that we're given an opportunity as a human race to fundamentally change the way we interact with each other and all of our living systems and come up with a function to do that. And we might not get there by 2040, it's highly unlikely, but to at least be a part of that transition and to begin it for our children, yours and mine. That, to me, feels like the most important thing that I can be doing for the rest of my days and I meet increasingly more and more people that feel the same way that we are part of potentially telling a brand-new story for humanity. And that's how I want to frame this as an opportunity as opposed to all the things that we might lose. 

 

David [00:20:29] Beautifully put, thank you. Damon. In the work that you're doing, you're really shining a light on the flaws in the system, as you say, and I'm wondering in undertaking your work if you suffered any backlash from those powerful forces that you're up against?

 

Damon [00:20:51] Surprisingly, no. I think because, we need to understand that when we say, you know, the powerful forces, the corporations, that we forget sometimes that there are humans within those institutions and some of those humans are very high up. And most of us humans know what's going on, they're just stuck in the game. And we have done so many screenings now to energy companies, banks, just really diverse groups of people and organisations. And the conversation is that -what do we do? We've just spent over the last 15 years x amount of millions or billions on pipe infrastructure for the gas that we're putting on. Now, you're telling us that gas might be deleterious to the climate- shit what do we do? How do we unravel from this? What can we use the pipes for and sit? So those conversations are going on and I think, you know, it's obviously not all benevolent there's people there absolutely playing games, especially at a high level. But funnily enough, the criticism I have got from 2040, has usually been from people on the far left who have said 'you didn't take an axe to capitalism hard enough, you didn't say this system is doomed and we've got to start a new one.' And my answer to them is that that was a very deliberate tactic. Who's gonna watch that film? This was a Trojan horse in a lot of ways, it was to try and bring in a huge amount of people that hadn't connected with these issues, in a way that was exciting and aspirationa and then when when we got into the rooms, then you had the deeper dive conversation. And that's happened at the banks and all these things I've talked about...the schools. We've got to be smarter with the way we tell our stories and stay out of this tribal, aggressive, dehumanising way of doing it, and actually find those points of common ground, bring people together and then have the deeper conversation and that was the best part of releasing this film to release it all around the world over the last year.  The conversations we've had and the screenings, the public screenings, we would have done about 140 Q*As with packed rooms of really robust conversations. I mean, you've been to one of them, people want to talk about this stuff. People so often now watch films on their own, on Netflix, on a laptop, with one person on the couch. Cinema is a beautiful opportunity for shared experience and apart from going to a big Marvel action film, we lose that. It's a town hall meeting, let's go and watch something like ways to watch the newsreels. People used to go together at six o'clock into the cinemas and watch the news and holler at the screen and talk about the day's events. It's a part of us, we want to share and have that discussion in cinema really provides that opportunity. So with both my films, Sugar and this one, I've wanted to invoke that again and not do a traditional release or just release it on Netflix, but actually make sure we take the film around and go to community town halls and take it into schools and take it into councils. And that's been the joy of doing this; getting the feedback, hearing what people want, hearing what their vision of 2040 is. And I can tell you categorically that it's a very similar vision to that. People want stronger communities, they want more nature in their cities, they want access to food. These are basic fundamentals. And we've seen that with Covid, all the excess fell apart, what do we look for? We looked for teachers, we looked for food, we looked for doctors. These are the things that matter to us. And we want more security in that and more resilience in that in a future that we create. 

 

David [00:24:13] Part of the connective power of social media is also kind of offset, as you say, you know, the wealth of information you can get from Twitter, but also the rabbit hole holes that you can go down...you know, we need to be more cognisant of our media consumption, don't we? It's very destructive for mental health and our outlook on life and our creativity, crucially. 

 

Damon [00:24:38] Yeah, one hundred percent. I think from my own experience I feel like sometimes I have to... If I need to write something or do something creatively for someone. If I've spent too much time on Twitter or writing emails, I call it admin mode- I feel like I'm in this left brain response and it is really hard to dream and think creatively in there, and I actually have to disengage, switch it off, go outside, go for a walk for a while and then sort of invite the right hemisphere to kick in the right brain to kick in and people aren't aware of that enough. I think that they probably know it intuitively but to actually deliberately do it takes effort, and I find myself I've got to rule for myself each day where I have to write down one original thought. So I'm allowed to look at some news for a while, see what's going on in the world but then I have to turn my Internet off as my rules for a while, and I have to come up with one original thought a day and I have to write that down. Because these days we SO feel every gap in the driving in the car or riding a bike or catching up, we've got a podcast on and we're listening to something. It's this information and I love it, it's great, but it's often other people's information and it's shared, it's going around and what are we actually coming up with ourselves? What's our own contribution? Terence McKenna used to say that the key to happiness was to create more culture than you consume, and that's incredibly tough to do right now when we are bombarded with culture. But I think it's really important to know what your essences and what you're contributing to the world- that might just be making up a silly song, driving your car, but just try and do that. Turn off the podcast at least on one trip and make up a song or think of a thought or think of a film idea or something and then write that down.  I find that is really key to my happiness and if I'm not doing that, if I'm just consuming what's out there, especially what's out there at the moment, which is so polarising and vitriolic. And if you try and speak with some kind of common sense or come from the middle of this grey...an area of ambiguity, people don't respond to that. They want to be put into tribes, so I think it's really important that we understand that, and people are really conscious of what they are consuming, but also what they're putting out there, because this is a collective hive mind, we forget that. We've created a collective mind and are you putting in something that's polluting it, like throwing a bottle of a plastic bottle in the ocean? Or are you putting it in something that's helping people? It's not causing drama or tension or angst it's...contributing to a new story, it's contributing to a better future. We all have that responsibility. And now, more than ever, it is crucial we take responsibility for that. 

 

David [00:27:24] Absolutely. Out of interest, have you written down today's original thought? 

 

Damon [00:27:29] Yes, I had an original thought today for an idea, for a sketch show. We've just built a new studio, a green screen studio where I live, and which is something like having this amazing play area where we can just come up with all sorts of fun things to do and I thought about when I wanted the first thing to shoot in that green screen today, and it did come to me and I'm really excited by it and I think it's going to be very good fun to shoot. So hopefully, you'll know about it soon when it appears. 

 

David [00:27:57] Yay we heard it here first. And you live in the Gulf Coast area, is that right? 

 

Damon [00:28:02] Just south, just near Byron Bay, which is sort of a bit of a coastal surf tourist destination in Australia. Beautiful hinterland, sort of mangos and macadamia nuts and bananas. And it's very lush. But I'm just sort of inland about 20 minutes. So we moved out of the city about four years ago and just had our second daughter, who's nine months old and really loved, I feel very lucky, especially during the lockdown to be surrounded by nature and like I said, this is a big tourist area, so we've had no tourists here for three months, which is is quite a spectacular part of the world in terms of the oceans and the forests and whatnot. So, I feel very grateful. 

 

David [00:28:39] Yeah, well, congratulations on your second daughter. And I can agree it is a beautiful part of the world. I was lucky enough to about five years ago, spend two months with my wife and our two boys who were babies at the time, pretty much to travel across Australia. And we we stopped off at Byron Bay for about two weeks around New Year. And I went to a town, I think, North, I guess, in your direction. We went to an amazing pizza restaurant, which is called Milk and Honey. Is that right? 

 

Damon [00:29:12] Yeah, that was it. That's in a town called Mullumbimby. 

 

David [00:29:14] Yes! We went there and the guy dropped out of basically kind of cutthroat, you know, kind of top end restaurant life and relocated to there to run the most amazing pizza restaurant. 

 

Damon [00:29:26] I know them well and that's that's how small the community is up here. I know them well. So, yeah, that they do is a smashing job of pizza making there.

 

David [00:29:35] Yeah, beautiful. Okay, so 2040 is really personal and the execution is really designed to engage and activate families as a unit, right? Is accessibility always paramount in the projects that you take on?

 

Damon [00:29:56] Yeah, there certainly were for Sugar End and this one. I thought that these issues were so important that I think sometimes documentary filmmakers or documentaries in general can fall into a pattern of being quite earnest or reverential and can be a little bit dry and you can have an academic in front of a bookcase. And if it makes it to a festival, then that's a great win and you get lauded and you might win a couple of awards, but I thought with both Sugar and this one, that this film had to play wider than that and it had to be embraced by the whole family and and from children to their grandparents. And that was an intention right from the beginning. And that was tricky at times, especially with sugar. I had sort of had to relinquish a lot of ego there because I thought, you know, it's kind of nice to get into one of those fancy festivals and get lauded as a documentary filmmaker. It's a little bit alluring, but I thought that that's what people want. The people I want to see this film, that need to see this film, won't go and see it at a film festival. This needs to be really broad and accessible and commercial. So with that in mind, it really did affect the way I made the film and made it playful and daggy and made sure it was colourful, and tried to use interesting approaches that weren't just the academic and the bookshelf and tried to be creative with the approach. I take great pride in that now that people still stop me in the street nearly every day, you know and  might say to me 'I've never really watched documentaries and I saw your film' or I go to parts of Australia that don't really watch those type of films that stop me and say, thanks, man. You know, I lost 10 kilos or reverse my type 2 diabetes, or I'm suddenly interested in environmental issues. So that worked, but it's not necessarily how I'm going to keep doing them, I'm not sure yet. A couple of projects I'm working on now are a lot more sophisticated and for a slightly older audience, and I'm really enjoying that process too. So I'm not sure yet whether I'll keep doing that or will it just depend, I guess, on the audience. But I don't think enough storytellers think of the audience, and especially in filmmakers... every point in that edit I was thinking about what was someone thinking? Were they still engaged with it, were they bored, was this too dense? Was it too much information? Do they need a laugh now, was that too dry? Is it too academic? How do you ride that balance between the head and the heart? The facts are important, but what are the parts that move people and keep them engaged and keep them watching and is it entertaining? All those considerations, which I think are just so important when you want to get your film seen and you want the message to be conveyed. But also with both those films, they had very strong impact campaigns, so the film was just a very small part of a much larger ecosystem that was created for Sugar- it was, you know, school curriculums and an app and the books and recipes and all sorts of things. And for 2040, we teamed up with about 50 different groups from around the world so people could go and activate their own climate plan. And we asked them questions about the type of person they are, what they're interested in and how much time they have or where they're willing to volunteer or give money. And that, to me, has been the biggest success, especially of 2040, is to see the solutions we show in the film brought to life by the public because they were given ways to get involved and take action. They weren't paralysed with fear and felt hopeless at the end of it. They felt motivated, then we gave them the tools straightaway to get involved and they responded in extraordinary ways. So, you know, the seaweed platform is now being built in Tasmania just from people getting ten- or fifteen-dollar donations. We raised almost a million dollars, same for micro grids. We've had nine hundred and fifty thousand kids in Australia be taught the 2040 curriculum materials because teachers were desperate for things to teach the kids because they were sick of teaching them how bad things are. They wanted to show the kids what the careers of the future are and get them excited. So that to me is the great success. Is that this way of telling the story, of using solutions and hope, grounded, muscular hope, not just fanciful hope, but real hope based on the practicalities of what people are doing in this moment has led to wonderful action and translated into the materialisation of these solutions I showed in the film, which is extraordinary and that continues, that work is still what I do every day and there's a seaweed industry starting up here now in Australia and all sorts of beautiful things are happening just because of you plant the seed in people's brains, you share a solution and then you enact there, or enable their creativity and watch them just take it and run with it. And that's what I think we've got to do more of.

 

David [00:34:46] Absolutely. And it does go right back to school curriculum. It's interesting you mentioned school there, because we also have to acknowledge that we've created a competitive system that's bringing certain people and ideologies in, and in and excluding others-it's deeply flawed. How do we shift from the competitive system to one that's more symbiotic and connected? 

 

Damon [00:35:14] That is a massive question and we don't have enough time and I don't know that anyone has that exact answer yet, but there are certainly people working on it and having really wonderful conversations about it. I think a great example is what's happening in agriculture right now, that we have...if you think about the current form of agriculture, it is absolutely based on a competitive, extractive, rivalrous system in that we fight nature. We try and control the weeds and the pests with chemicals. We constantly plough and dig up the soil, releasing carbon, but we're also destroying all that biota. And we plant rows and rows of monocultures, when nature thrives on diversity. And what's emerging now is something called regenerative agriculture, which flips that whole thing on its head. So there's no breaking of the soil anymore. They use cover crops to draw carbon from the atmosphere and pull it down into the soil. Once that carbon gets in the soil, it kickstarts all the billions of microorganisms in that soil, that then solubilize the minerals in the plant and make them bioavailable. So that suddenly we get healthier plants. Then it also retains water. For every one percent of carbon that you add to 30 centimetres of soil, one percent, just one percent...the water holding capacity increases by about 150,000 litres per hectare on every rainfall. So, it turns the soil into these incredible carbon, these water sponges. So this is a great example of what we need to be doing- is to to start working with nature, and then we get all the incredible cascading benefits, plus we get nutritious food. Versus the current model, which is just destroying the land. And as I said, we've got 60 years of topsoil left if we keep doing that approach. So that's just one example of so many things that are happening now, whether it's microgrid energy of decentralising that energy so it's not just coming from one central baseload. There's something called participatory democracy, participatory budgeting, which means a group of people in a region are given access to a percentage of the council's budget and they get to decide what to do with that money. Again, this is like decentralising the power structures and redistributing the money so that's not just creating these incredible hierarchies. When I did some maths yesterday for a talk I was giving, the average household net worth in America now, the median household net worth, is ninety seven thousand dollars. Ninety seven thousand seconds is one day and two hours. Jeff Bezos networth is one hundred and forty nine billion dollars. One hundred and forty nine billion seconds is four thousand seven hundred and twenty five years. So the difference between that one day and two hours and four thousand seven hundred twenty five years...nowhere in the natural kingdom does any species, plant or animal, have that greater discrepancy within its own species. That allows such power to that person and control who can then set the rules of the game lobby, it gives them access to a ridiculous amount of things. That is absolutely destabilising our sense of democracy. So these are the things we need to address. This is, like you said, the system we need to address. But there are new models, there's regenerative finance coming through. Kate Raworth, the English economist, her doughnut economics, which is interestingly enough, really taking hold in this moment. Amsterdam have just agreed to use that doughnut model as they rebuild from the Corona virus. I know Los Angeles is talking about using it as they rebuild. People are looking for new stories, they're looking for new models. And what Kate's model does very well is it still plays with the system we have now, I think it's a great transition, but it just put some boundaries. It says if we cross these ecological boundaries, like ocean acidification or climate change or using too many chemicals on the soil, an alarm should go off. We should know about that and reign it back in. And the same happens socially. If we reach these ridiculous income inequality levels, something should tell us that this isn't right and it's going to destabilise society, let's bring it back within the boundaries again. So to me that seems like a very sensible thing to do that can be quite easily implemented. Because this neo liberal story, this constant, endless growth narrative is just ridiculous, it's not leading to happiness. We know that now it doesn't correlate that. You see so many countries like Costa Rica, for example, has a GDP, a fifth of America. And yet their metrics of longevity, wellness far surpass Americans. So this idea of having more stuff and constant growth equals happiness is just nonsense and a lot of us have seen this in Covid, when we've had less stuff. We've slowed down we've connected with our families more. We don't need this stuff, It doesn't make us happy. And this stuff is also the thing that's tipping us over the edge and causing this ecological breakdown. They're just a few examples. There are so many people and other really interesting groups that is starting to have discussions about what the next system might look like. It's an open conversation inviting people in to discuss and share it, there's desgners starting to do that. Lawmakers and rule... this is the moment that people are having it. We've seen in the last three months tha this is going to keep happening. There are going to be more pandemics moving forward. There are going to be more climate shocks. We've just had horrible bushfires in Australia that people know we have to do things differently. We have a 20th century model that we're applying to 21st century problems. And so we need to upgrade the system. It needs a reboot. 

 

David [00:40:50] Absolutely. Absolutely. Powerful thoughts there. Damon, I think the kind of illustration of Bezos phenomenal, staggering kind of mortifying wealth, is a reminder. And I think it's interesting to compare things to each other, isn't it? We actually had a conversation with Zak Bush in a previous episode or Doctor Zach Bush, I'm not sure if you're aware of his work. He's a triple certificated doctor in the U.S, he has a farmers foundation. But in the conversation, we got into the idea of how you could learn from the principles of regenerative agriculture and farming and sort of bringing about balance through rewilding principles as well. And what would happen if we were to use the same principles to effectively rewild our media landscape? What would happen if we allowed our social platforms, and our media channels and advertising all to work together to try and bring together a sort of harmony and balance, rather than this perpetual quest for growth? One of the central themes to your work is the symbiosis and tension between people and the planet. How would you describe our relationship now and where do you see that going in the near future? 

 

Damon [00:42:11] I think you've struck on probably the deepest root of our discussion- that the way we attribute value and meaning is through stories, as we know, and the metaphors. And right now, our metaphore for our relationship to the natural world is one of extraction. We see ourselves as separate from it, as superior to it. And that began to happen, obviously with Christianity, but then it really ramped up around the scientific revolution. Pre- Scientific revolution, the metaphore that different cultures had was profoundly different. Our own Australian aboriginals refer to themselves as custodians of the land, the Native American Indians, the Egyptians referred to Mother Earth and Father Sky- this sort of parental respect. My favourite was the ancient Chinese who call themselves 'reverent guests' of the land. And there's  this beautiful story of this Admiral Jiang, who sailed the world 50 years before Columbus on 300 ships with twenty seven thousand men. And they didn't go to conquer or dominate or commit any of the atrocities that Columbus did. They actually went to find the wonders of the natural world and to take back to their emperor zebras and giraffes and these beautiful exotic plant species they'd never seen because they respected the natural world. You then jump to the late17th/ 16th century, you have Decartes, Francis Bacon...suddenly the language starts to shift, Bacon said 'We must hound nature in her wanderings. We must put her in constraints. We must enter and penetrate her every hole and corner.' So the schism happens around there. And then we move along and then we really prioritise economics. Then we have the Lewis Powell memorandum, we begin neo liberalism, we have Thatcher, Reagan, etc... So that underlying metaphor, if we don't address that, if we don't teach our children a new metaphor or the old metaphor, or a new story, we're not going to get through this. We have to see ourselves as part of this. It isn't the environment. It's OUR environment. And I love this idea of... we don't fight climate change, we are actually nature defending itself and that's that's our role. We are part of this ecosystem. We are contributing right now in a deleterious way, but we have the opportunity to restore it because we are it. And we are deeply connected to it. So that's the core of my work and why am I made 2040 was how do we tell this news story? How do we embed this new metaphore to our children, who are all born within an innate understanding of that and love of nature and connectionto it, yet we have devised a system that erodes it and starts to separate them from it an I think we have to make sure they retain that so that they do defend nature because it has value and meaning to them. 

 

David [00:45:31] Beautiful words. Thank you. Damon, many of 2040's ideas in the film are about reconnecting with nature and building strong, interconnected communities. Can you talk a little about your ideas around decentralisation? 

 

Damon [00:45:48] Yes. So I think that if we had to sort of sum up especially the last hundred years, hundred and fifty years, we've had very centralised decision making. The 20th century was obviously governments and I think the last 30, 40 years has been corporations. And again, this system we've created based on this dominance and winning that game at all costs has meant that companies buy out other companies, they buy out more companies and suddenly we create these hierarchies. So we have a handful of companies that own our food. We have a handful of companies that own our media and we've got a handful of companies that own our data. The system now is so complex, it has so many moving parts, that to think that we can govern it from a centralised body is absolute madness. And I think that that's why there has been a push back from a lot of people around the world. One of the reasons that people have moved further to the right and voted for these authoritarian leaders is because somewhere they're saying- we have no power in our community anymore, we used to be able to make decisions based on the nuance of our own region, now we have a corporation a thousand kilometres away that's making decisions for us. Or we have a government at a national level that has no idea what happens in our little region or our precinct. So I think what we need to look at is how the body works. The body has this series of cells that are absolutely individual and have their own function and do beautiful things or the liver or the pancreas, but they all are part of a healthier whole. But they're very independent. And I think we've got the technology now, as I showed in the film, the microgrid energy is a great example. Any home with a solar panel and a battery can get this box. That connects him to another house, the neighbour with the same setup. And when they all joined together, they themselves form their own grid. It becomes like a water tank of community energy that they can buy and sell from. The beauty is that they have the resilience, if the main grid goes down or there's a natural disaster, they stand independent because they just like a cell, they are functioning on their own. But then they get to connect to the next group of houses in their neighbourhood who are doing the same thing and suddenly those two cells, those two market grids lock together and they're stronger as two. And then you keep multiplying, and suddenly you've got a whole city joined up by these different market grids that are resilient, that are sharing their energy and most importantly, are keeping the money within their economy. They're buying and selling energy from each other. It's not going off to a big energy company elsewhere who's making all the money. So across a range of different examples, this move to a more decentralised world, is exactly what the younger generation want- that's what they're growing up with. And we're seeing companies start to respond to that. You see a company like Ligeia who isn't just putting out their version of what they want the next sort of series to be. They're now asking their fans, what do you want? And they get the feedback from that and then they build it and release it. So we're sort of dissolving these boundaries of the person at the top knows best- that's such an old model- and the new generation coming through that aren't interested in that. They want things to be decentralised. They want things better distributed financially, but they want to be able to share things laterally, like the Internet. You know, we're losing these central publishing houses, we're all publishers now. But obviously, with that comes enormous responsibility. But I don't think we've developed the tools yet to deal with the complexity of problems that we have, it's so complicated, it's so complex, and yet we have such inadequate tools in terms of social media to actually communicate complex problems, we just deal in tiny soundbites and really divisive modes. We need to, again, find the right ways to have these deep conversations. Hear each other out and then make decisions moving forward. 

 

David [00:50:12] I'd love to hear more about the work you do around the films, so the materials and resources you create to support individual activation in a deeper way. Can you talk a bit about that? 

 

Damon [00:50:25] Yes, so we were fortunate enough to be a part of an organisation called Good Pitch and they are an international organisation in the U.K. as well. And they choose six films, documentaries with a social impact element to them. And they basically put you in a room with 400 philanthropists and they give you seven minutes to pitch your film. And you've got to make a short clip and then say why you think the film's important and what you think the film could achieve in terms of making an impact. And then one by one or perhaps no one, people stand up, will come up to a microphone and say, look, I really enjoyed this. You know, I've got two daughters, I want to do something about this, I want a better future for her, I'm going to give you twenty thousand dollars or I'm gonna give you one hundred thousand dollars. And both my films, but especially 2040, was just this extraordinary day of human outpouring...connected... I felt so validated in making this film because we just we just got an extraordinary amount of support that day. And it wasn't to make the film, it was to make sure the film penetrated the culture. So curricular materials whether it's social media content, kits for corporations to take action and and create change, a platform where people could activate their own climate plans. All these tools that sat at the back of the film, because part of my pitch in, and I'm sure you understand this, is so often you watch a documentary, it ends and you feel this emotion, whether it's inspiration or anger or frustration or...And there's nothing to do with it. And 10 minutes later, you're scrolling social media again and you're back into the system and that emotion is dissipated. So I just wanted to make sure that we had somewhere that people could go as soon as I finish the film and then take action on the emotion that they felt. So with sugar it was recipe's or an app that counted the sugar or something to do with a kids or a book or a plan. Which just had an extraordinary response, and the same with 2040. Wow. I really love that idea. Let's see, what can I do about it? Well, here you go. You can volunteer and sign up for this group to help bring it to life. Join this seaweed industry or donate some money to help build it. Fantastic- and people did that. So I just think it's really important in this moment that we have this call of active content. It's not passive content, it's active content because people want to do things and they're sick of feeling overwhelmed and they're sick of feeling powerless to everything that's going on in the world. And yes, I'm aware that our little climate plan isn't going to solve all the problems, but what it does is it switches people's mode to one that's engagement action. They feel like that actually contributed. They shared it with their friends, they're suddenly interested in that topic and all the ripple effects start to happen. So I think we've got to be smarter with the way we tell stories and we've got to give people opportunities to get involved and take action because they want to. Millions and millions of people want to help. They just don't have a clue what to do. 

 

David [00:53:40] You're a very successful actor, Damon, and now Director. What gave you the courage to start telling your own stories? 

 

Damon [00:53:53] So I acted for 11 years and I would say that only twice was there a job that I really enjoy or felt connected to and both of those were...well, one of them I was playing a real person, a really respected Australian, and I got to meet and spend time with his his wife, who was in her 80s and kind of recreate his final steps, which felt like quite a noble act and I really enjoyed that. And the other one was sort of looking at a time in our history that was not particularly in the way we treated our indigenous in the early 20s and so both of them had integrity and I really enjoyed that. But then most of the other jobs, the majority would just I felt really frustrated being on set, I felt like I was not sharing values that I agreed with, sometimes I was putting out a version of how people should act that I didn't agree with and that I wanted to tell my stories, but I was just too scared. I didn't trust myself or my storytelling ability. I had lots of really damaging sort of thoughts in my head that were really just didn't serve me well at all. Lots of self deprecation and just didn't think to who am I to tell my own stories,I'm not worthy of just hide behind other people's stories. And then I had quite a profound change in my life, I met my wife. Now, Zoe was very radiant human being and very open minded, and I sort of began this journey of self exploration, as people do, and read books and drank ayahuasca and did all the things that you do to try and understand more about yourself. In that process, I started to observe my own story and what I was telling myself and start to unravel from those thoughts, and change that narrative in my head. And so to keep myself in the bottle, I had a moment in a hospital one night where I was with these very old people in this ward, and I ended up writing a letter to myself at 2:00 in the morning as though I was 85 and sort of saying, right, well, did you do the things that you wanted to do? You're in this bed now. You're in your I.D. Are you proud of your life? Did you hide behind acting? Did you actually side of things you think about the world and the system and the changes you want to make, or did you never have the courage in your brief, tiny blip of a moment in all the history of space and time, what did you do with it? And that was a profound turning point for me, and I made this sort of short film the next day or the next week, actually, and entered it in this competition, Australia, which is quite a big deal here. And it got in and then you watch your film with one hundred fifty thousand people in the Sydney parklands and it won. And it was such a moment for me because it was a really daggy fun thing that I kind of made for kids, but people resonated with it andit was a part of me that I was really hiding because I was very much cultivating this sort of rolly smoking, scotch drinking, velvet jacket, wearing actor guy, and here I was making this very daggy animal beatbox for kids and then it won. So my veneer got shattered in a moment and then I really embraced that other part of me, I guess, that was willing to to say things and put my voice out there. And yeah, it's been a lovely journey ever since and I don't think I'll ever act again. I've sort of put myself in the films, I guess, a little bit, but I haven't done any acting for about seven or eight years and I don't miss it at all. I still respect it, but I'm not going to rush back to it any time soon. 

 

David [00:57:32] I love that story about the letter to yourself from the future visualisation seems to be a big part of your process, both personally and within your work. But you also seem to trust your gut in a very profound way and instincts. How do you know what move to make next year? 

 

Damon [00:57:54] Yeah, that's a great question. And I don't think I can exactly answer that because I don't think there are words for it sometimes I think anyone that resonates with that sort of sense of knowing them something. What I do do is make sure that at some... it's valid. What I have learnt is to really, I think what I've got good at is, is how to research properly and how to actually intuit something but then research it and then research the counternarrative to it and then make a decision. So that I feel very solid in these moments when I'm talking to you and other people in the press that I, I have done the work and I trust that and it takes a lot of hard work. As you know, it's like this is five years making this film or four and a half years, and nearly a year of that was just research and going down all the rabbit holes and reading all the denial arguments and the counter narratives, which is really confronting sometimes and and heartbreaking, but getting a holistic view of something so that you can stand in it with some sort of certainty and say, well, no, if you did push me to a certain area, I understand that. I can empathise with that. I can also see on a line how people get pulled in to those other narratives so I have empathy for them as well and I think that's really important right now. I think film makers have an enormous responsibility in whatever they're putting out right now to make sure it is robust and it is full of integrity. And we've seen that recently with the Planet the Humans film. Michael Moore's film, which I just found so tough to watch because, yes, there were some valid points in there around us. We can't keep doing what we're doing. The system's broken. But just the lack of fact checking on such basic things like solar panel use and whatnot in the life of salt. I found it really painful to watch because I think we have a responsibility to at least run our films by a variety of people, get some different opinions. It's too important what we're putting out there. It's too easy just to share a YouTube video now and pass it on. People do it all the time, so let's make sure if we're putting something out there that it does stand up. And I don't think enough people are doing that right now. 

 

David [01:00:14] I'm very interested in where your life force comes from. Damon, what drives you? 

 

Damon [01:00:23] I think I fundamentally love and trust the majority of human beings. I do think that we are capable of pulling this off. I think that, as we've talked about before, the system currently rewards sociopathic behaviour. So if you're very good at having no empathy and dominating and crushing and being okay with crushing people, you will get to the top. You will accrue huge, huge amounts of money. You will then be given the keys to the kingdom in the sense of your access to politicians and setting the rules of the game. Now, because of that, we are rewarding the sociopathic behaviour. And those people are now controlling the majority of us who aren't those sociopaths, who were actually altruists and want a better world. So I want to make things...and what drives me is trying to get the majority of us to understand that, so that we can turn things around and know that this isn't as insurmountable as it seems. I have faith in us. I think it's a miracle that we get on like we do and we pass each other on the street. We get on the trains or the tube or we get in a plane with a pilot we've never met. We do trust each other and we do think that we are fundamentally good. Of course, there are bad actors, there's no doubt about that. And of course, the system promotes that through scarcity and what not brings out this behaviour. But I think in the next two hundred years, maybe we will have a different system and it will be more of an ecological civilisation. We will have legitimately waste free systems. We've restored the atmosphere, we've helped the planet. We might need to go through a lot of pain to get there, but I do think we can pull this off, and that's what drives me, that's that's what I want to teach my children, and especially right now with all this stuff that's going on. I want to have in my toolkit the arsenal to be out of say to her- Yes, I know this is happening, honey, and it is horrible, but check out what this person is doing, check out what this group of people are doing. Look at this design and what he's come up with, look at this person. I feel like I've got such a beautiful catalogue of those people now that I can share with her and I can show her, and I can show other people and we can talk about it. And it just, it's amazing to see how it changes people when they get that glimmer of hope. Suddenly they light up. Suddenly they're more engaged and they want to learn more. So this is, I think, just fundamental to getting through this. We've got to encourage media organisations, all storytellers, artists, poets, musicians, songwriters, like now is our time. I love the Terence McKenna quote. He said that the role of the artist is to save the soul of mankind and anything else is a dithering while Rome burns. If the artist can't find the way, then the way cannot be found. 

 

David [01:03:17] Beautiful. Very, very inspiring words and very energising. I'm curious, what have been some of the hurdles you need to work through, things that have tripped you up that you've had to reconcile along the way? 

 

Damon [01:03:34] The toughest part of making 2040 was what I had to leave out. And so the first edit was about three hours and 20 minutes And I really wanted people to know the barriers to reaching this better 2040. And as we've talked about sort of the rules of the game, the system, those things I found really challenging and frustrating and I still I mean, my country right now, even as we rebuild from Covid...in a land with more wind and sun than than any any other than with the opportunity to be a renewable energy powerhouse, we are so stuck in an old paradigm and are still talking about building coal mines and rebuilding with gas because we've such got such a polluted political system. Those things are infuriating to me, and they are the barriers and the blocks. But if I spend too much energy and time on them, I do find it brings me down. And I know that people are doing that work. And this is again..people often ask me about, you know, Greta Thunberg, what do you think of Greta and what you think it is? I think that there's absolute necessity in all that we need is a multipronged approach. We need people sounding the fire alarm but we also need people showing them where the exits are. And these things all have to work concurrently.  And I think, I wish I could just tell people or show people, you know I had this scene where there was this huge power coming, Veton Fore, and they were building this, they wanted to build this coal fired power station on the banks of the Elbe River in Germany. And the local German government did this assessment of it, they brought in their environmental department and said, look, no, you can't do this because it's going to pollute the water there. It's just not going to happen. So under the World Trade Organisation rules, Veton four were able to sue the German government for impacting their ability to make profit. And they sued them for 1.4 Billion dollars. Now, the German government couldn't could match that fund, so they backed down and the power station got built and now it's polluting the water. So the rules of the game allow corporations to override our democratic process. To me, that's just like hair pulling stuff that people need to know about. So those things are sometimes the things that do deflate me. But I just keep going and I keep trusting and that's all you can do. We've come full circle here when we started- that's what we have to think that way, if we lose hope, then why would we get up in the morning? Even if we don't get to this world I want to create by the end of my lifetime, I want to spend the rest of my time trying to get there, and showing people how to do it and teaching my children how to do it. What a great thing to do regardless. I don't want to surrender and just have this nihilistic accepting that we're doomed, which is a narrative that's emerging and it's a narrative that is perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry. It must be said they know that if they get people thinking like that, they will disengage and they won't take action. So we need to be savvy, that that is an orchestrated campaign by them. But I just want to show people that we can do it and that we can be better off if we do it. We can have better communities, cleaner air, healthier food, and a better future for our children. 

 

David [01:06:54] In making the films, what have you discovered about the power of story to create change? 

 

Damon [01:07:03] It's enormous. And I think that's why, as I talked about before, this idea of getting a group of people in a room to watch something together. It's just so wonderful and so powerful and. Also to film has an ability to move people and educate them at the same time. And that's a really tricky balance to get right, because we still do need facts, no doubt about it. But we need to deliver the facts in a way that stirs the soul and is evocative and makes people laugh or makes them cry or whatever it might be, we have to move people at the same time. And cinema or film making  is such a beautiful and delicate craft because it allows you to do that. It allows you to sit there and play with a soundtrack or a particular score or hold on an image of a person for a fraction longer to elicit that emotional response that it's just such a beautiful medium. That can be abused, or can be used for people just to zone out and disengage. And like a sporting game, just be numb. Or... and I think people are starting to realise this is it can be used to to really motivate people and get them engaged in a particular topic. And what I'd say has happened particularly in the last five or six years is that organisations are waking up to this as well. So this whole space of films with impact, campaigns like Sugar and 2040 and lots of other films. Now suddenly you have access to all these networks that weren't available before. You just used to release your film on a Thursday in Australia, cross your fingers you got good reviews and hope people that came to it in the first weekend... both with Sugar, we said, look at scrap, that that's too risky. Let's actually do this tour of the country, get people out into the into the cinemas to discuss things. But let's partner with all the right organisations that might want to use this film and use it as a way to help their own messaging. Then suddenly you get access to all their databases and their e-mail lists and suddenly your network, like the mycelium underground, is starting to grow and all these nodes are forming, and all these people are running the film and doing nights and events and the whole thing becomes decentralised, as we talked about before. And suddenly you've permeated the culture and suddenly teachers are downloading your materials and suddenly, you know, energy companies are having film nights and having discussions afterwards with the CEOs. That's the power of cinema. And it isn't just about watching it on a device in your lounge room. It's actually using it as a tool and a shared experience. And I feel so excited by that and to have discovered that and to have seen it now work so tangibly with both films. I mean, you know, we did a screening in the U.K. parliament with Jamie Oliver of the Sugar film, and then they announced the sugary drinks tax weeks later. We did a screening at the New Zealand government and they banned sugary drinks near their hospitals. We showed this year, the last year at the Climate Action Summit in New York, that the UN mapped the film around the halls of the General Assembly and showed snippets of 2040 to the world leaders. Like it was just extraordinary to think that's a film. I've had bands, huge well, world famous bands, asked for the clips of 2040 to show on their screens as they play the concerts like, this is what imagery can do. This is what showing exciting images of a better future can do. This is what filmmaking can do. And to me, that's just, yeah, it's been abused, but it's time to use it for the right needs. 

 

David [01:10:46] Imparting... can I just share a short story that I feel is relevant? It's followed by a question. But as I mentioned, it was about five years ago that my wife and I went on the most amazing two month trip when we travelled across Australia, starting in Melbourne. And then and then kind of midway through, we were in Byron Bay with our two young boys who were just babies at the time. Minnie who turned to today wasn't alive then. So I'm going to say it was probably around New Year from 2014 to 15. And unusually for me, I decided to actually sit with a clairvoyant. There was a tent by the beach and you left your name on a note, a notice board that was outside. Put your name next to a time. And then you turned up at that time and sat with this very strange lady in a very strange tent. She said some things, well, I'd never experienced anything like it and actually, I've only ever sat with a clairvoyant twice. But she said some very profound things that stuck with me ever since. Honestly, and one of those was she said 'I may not be describing this right, but you create illusions for people. And in the future, you will create beautiful illusions that will help people.' And that moment actually influenced how I think about our work and indeed how I run this business. And of course Damon, that's exactly what you do. How can the wider creative community use their power and position to better serve the planet? 

 

Damon [01:12:38] I'm going to go back to that analogy of the human body again.  If you can make your cell healthy, and that sale might be your home. What are you doing with your waste? What are you doing with your energy? What are you doing with your resources? That still can be your office. Same questions apply. If all of us take responsibility for our cell, then we contribute to a much healthier ecosystem. But above that, we need people to find their agency in this moment, because our individual actions help, especially because we're social animals and we're sending signals and cues about the new acceptable behaviour. Amazing studies showing if you put solar panels on your roof, the chances of your neighbour putting solar panels on the roof go up exponentially because we're social creatures. But we also need to find our agency right now. We need to speak out against the system and what it's doing and our resource use and how we're treating nature. Because it's not enough just to do something on your own anymore. So I would encourage people to get together as a group and collectively write to your local MP. All the employees I've spoken to said it works every time when I get a letter that's from 30 or 40 people that want to meet me. If it's individual, it's easy to brush away. But a group, I will sit down and meet with them. The same goes for your boss at work, can you get the people in your group, in your in your work to say, hey, we want a few changes. We care about the future, our children's future. What changes can we make? We all have that ability. And I say this from someone that was totally petrified to stand up or share anything. But once I rewrote that narrative, once I had a purpose which became my children, that it wasn't about me anymore. I actually I found the courage because I was speaking on behalf of other people. And all of us need to do that. Now, what ever your passion is if you're interested in animals. If you've got children yourself, speak on their behalf. Because we are absolutely at the cliff edge right now. From resources to climate to all sorts of things, we are about to go over the cliff. And so we need people to start taking us in a different direction. And if we don't do it now, unfortunately, it's going to be too late. So these next 10 years, especially as we rebuild from Covid- the door's ajar. And we've got to take it. William Diaby said that to experience a crisis is to inhabit a world that is temporarily up for grabs. It's up for grabs. Let's throw forward the radical ideas and start to pivot these enormous hulking system to one that serves us and all living systems much better. 

 

David [01:15:33] Thank you so much, Damon. Thank you. This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for Sugar. Thank you for 2040. And thank you for your beautiful, articulate, inspiring and motivating words. 

 

Damon [01:15:48] My pleasure, David. And thank you for having me. And go and give Minnie a big birthday hug. 

 

David [01:15:55] I will do that. Thank you, Damon.