JENNA OUTCALT
Staff writer
To filmmaker Rory Fielding, everything is connected, and water is the substance that binds it all together. There can be no human health without ocean health, which is exactly what led Fielding through three of his most recent documentaries.
Fielding and the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative will host screenings for Fielding’s documentaries throughout the week at Chautauqua Cinema. They will show “Troubled Waters: A Turtle’s Tale” at 4:30 p.m. today, “We Are All Plastic People Now” at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday and “Descent: Into the Blue” at 4:30 p.m. Friday. Each screening will be followed by a Q-and-A with Fielding and a virtual panel of experts from the film.
When Fielding began this series of documentaries, he didn’t realize the path it would take him down.
“I didn’t start out as being any kind of an activist or conservationist or preservationist,” he said. “In fact, my prior film at the time was a baseball film about the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.”
However, an article about turtle hatchlings sparked Fielding’s curiosity and inspired a short film. That short film quickly ended up expanding into “Troubled Waters,” a full-length documentary about the human-made challenges sea turtles face, featuring actor and environmental advocate Ted Danson.
“We started using the sea turtle as an allegory for the environment and for all the headwinds and human impacts in the ocean,” Fielding said.
This was especially effective because of the sympathetic reaction humans have to sea turtles, Fielding explained. One of the takeaways from the film that resonated with Fielding was how every single turtle that washed up on shore was full of plastic. That thread led him to investigate how much plastic was going into other species — namely, humans.
In “We Are All Plastic People Now,” Fielding put a greater focus on the scientific side of the environment, investigating biology and chemistry to see how plastic and related chemicals show up in three different generations of his own family.
“I used myself, which I don’t normally do, as a sort of sentient character in the film,” Fielding said, “and that’s kind of what made it different and unusual.”
He said the documentary yielded distressing results about the amount of chemicals in human bloodstreams, regardless of generation. However, the film also influenced solutions to this problem.
“I feel pretty proud of that film because it has been screened by many governmental agencies, from the U.S. Senate to state legislators, and it has had an impact in awareness and [affected] some environmental laws,” Fielding said.
After the film, Fielding thought he was done with environmental films. However, he attended a symphony about climate change called “Terra Nostra” by Christophe Chagnard and was moved to make another film about the earth.
“The idea was to do something completely different than what I had done before — not very wordy and something that would inspire people to realize that if we lose this, we’ll never get it back,” Fielding said.
Fielding reached out to Chagnard about creating a documentary based on his symphony. Chagnard asked him to make two promises: The film had to be hopeful, and it had to involve voices of the youth. Fielding agreed and created the film “Descent: Into the Blue.”
The film follows divers dedicated to rebuilding coral reefs, from veteran scuba divers to the younger generations getting certified. Although the documentary follows these environmental advocates, it is built around Chagnard’s symphony and the music of Renee Sunbird, the film’s composer.
“I hope it inspires people to know that this is something we cannot lose,” Fielding said. “Whatever it takes, we have to fix it.”
The film weaves in poetry from children about their dreams and aspirations, as well as what the ocean means to them. Fielding said although the state of the coral could be depressing, the film was ultimately hopeful. He said he wants the music, cinema and people in each documentary to motivate his audience.
“If you don’t engage people and if you don’t inspire them and if they don’t care after they see whatever the information is, the film has no purpose,” he said. “It will not inspire them to action.”
Fielding said he was “inspired constantly” by the people featured in the documentaries, and he hopes his audience is, too.
“I feel like this is the best of humanity,” he said.
