Building a new type of cinema to fight climate collapse in Waiting for the Storms

Le Bel Écran is a monthly column about Quebec's screen culture from a local perspective. 

"With ecological awareness, a new economy of cinema should be born," writes Marcos Uzal in the April issue of Cahiers du cinema. Part critical examination and part manifesto, the most influential film magazine in the French-speaking world dives into the question of making environmentally conscious art amidst impending climate catastrophe. 

They discuss films like Todd Haynes apocalyptic Dark Waters about the poisonous forever chemicals of the Dupont company and also, the Quebec documentary, Geographies of Solitude, Jacquelyn Mills's ode to the "living archive" of Sable island and the life and activism of Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who lived on the remote strip of land off the coast of Nova Scotia for over 40 years. Yet, the bulk of their coverage isn't about subjects but action: amidst an ongoing climate crisis, how can filmmakers responsibly make films with minimal environmental impact? 

This question has been on the mind of Quebec filmmaker, François Delisle for over a decade. One of Quebec's most respected filmmakers, known for critically acclaimed films like Chorus, The Meteor and Ca$h Nexu$, Delisle's latest film Waiting for the Storms (Le temps in French) was a turning point for the director. Set in various futuristic eras, the film follows various characters across different landscapes as each grapples in their own way with the impact of climate catastrophe. With echoes of Chris Marker's pivotal post-apocalyptic film from 1962, La jetée, the film uses still rather than moving images. An anxious and desperate film, Delisle explains that the process changed how he viewed filmmaking, "from an ecological point of view, I'm unsure I'll ever be able to look back." 

Relying on relatable archetypes, the film vibrates with urgency, offering a pathway towards hope and change amidst disaster. In an era of irony poisoned apathy, it's a film that feels deeply sincere in its message and approach, reflecting the cautious optimism of its maker. 

"Every film I make, leads into the next one," Delisle says. His previous film, Ca$h Nexu$, explored social injustice and inequality. Doing research on that film led him to climate injustice, which set him on a new path.

"At first," he explains, "I was in shock, an almost zombie-like state, then I started to write."

Ca$h Nexu$ also motivated Delisle to make some drastic decisions: he'd no longer fly, reducing his carbon footprint.

"I went to Korea for a 15 minute Q &A," he says. "It used to be that I'd take advantage of those opportunities to travel and explore new countries, but now ethically, flying that far to speak to people for 15 minutes seems wrong." 

The decision was borne out of his research but also the future, "I have children. I don't want to live off the backs of my children and the future generation. At first, I had a mourning period, but now it's second nature."

That doesn't mean that Delisle doesn't engage with his audience. With Waiting for the Storms, he's presented various Q&As across Montreal. He describes the experience as taxing but rewarding, the discussion moving from the cinema into the streets. People, young people in particular, want to share their experiences.

"After five minutes, they seem to forget the movie is mostly still images," he says. "People have questions about the future, which are difficult for me to answer, I'm just a simple citizen filmmaker with a strong point of view."

Delisle isn't the only Quebec filmmaker looking towards ecology as a subject. Sylvain L'Espérance's Archeology of Light, Anne-Marie Rocher's Urban Forests and Robert Morin's Festin boréal are among a growing number of films tackling our increasingly strained relationship with the natural world. While drastically different in tone and approach, the films question through form and action, the way we live our lives. What does it mean to lose touch with the environment and how can we forge a pathway to the future?

For Delisle, that question explicitly means sacrifice. He emphasizes that he isn't cynical and actually sees a hopeful path for the future, but it necessitates major changes. "We're going to have to mourn our current lifestyles and until we move past that, we can't make any changes. And we have to change. I don't think that means sacrificing our happiness. I don't think that happiness can be calculated in money or possessions, but rather, is measured in exchanges with one another and also our health." 

Compared to many other art forms, cinema requires a lot of resources and contributes to pollution. Delisle points to Hollywood as a huge polluter, but suggests that most filmmaking practices aren't exactly ecologically minded. Building on what he learned from Waiting on the Storm, Delisle plans to make further changes, such as abandoning the use of artificial lights.

"It almost looks like a student film set, but it's up to us as filmmakers to find cinema through this process," he says. "I wonder, will cinema survive this change? How can we imagine the cinema of the future? These are questions I ask myself."