Bob Brown towers in biopic ‘The Giants’

By Liz Hobday in Melbourne

A brand new movie about Bob Brown and the forests he’s spent his life preventing to guard has been taking part in to sold-out theatres.

Directed and produced by the staff behind the Freeman documentary, Laurence Billiet and Rachael Antony, “The Giants” tells the story of Brown’s life, interspersed with the story of large bushes and the way they coexist within the forest.

Brown sees his participation within the movie venture as simply one other a part of the environmental activism he’s been identified for because the ’70s.

“If it evokes one younger individual to develop into energetic both for social justice or the surroundings, it can have all been worthwhile,” he advised AAP.

The previous nationwide Greens social gathering chief could be happy early screenings in Hobart and Launceston cinemas have bought out, and The Giants has garnered optimistic receptions at movie festivals in Perth, Adelaide and on the Gold Coast.

Brown was a pacesetter of the battle to avoid wasting Tasmania’s Franklin River within the ’70s and ’80s, later turning into the primary overtly homosexual member of parliament in Australia.

Now nicely into his eighth decade, he’s nonetheless preventing as exhausting as ever – presently campaigning towards logging in native forests throughout Australia, salmon farming in Tasmania and krill fishing in Antarctica.
And, after all, local weather change.

Brown says he’s not one for trying again, however felt passing on his personal experiences within the documentary would possibly assist younger people who find themselves depressed concerning the surroundings, simply as he was.

“It’s logical to get depressed if you see what’s occurring on this planet, however we’ve acquired to get previous that and get energetic,” he mentioned.

When requested if the movie is likely to be preaching to the transformed, Brown replies the transformed are in actual fact nearly all of Australians – and he desires them to behave on their beliefs.

The place does he get such vitality and resilience in spite of everything this time? A part of the reply is a religious reference to the forest, the movie reveals.

The documentary makes use of awe-inspiring, computer-generated imagery to point out how the largest bushes work together with the forest surroundings and even with one another.

However for these motivated by the movie’s highly effective message, Brown notes that environmental activism has modified because the ’70s.

There are harsher penalties for peaceable protest today, he says, and organisations such because the Bob Brown Basis face being criminalised.

“The Giants” is screening nationally.