Explore loss, memory, and growth though the lens of award-winning directors and writers from across the globe.
From a trailhead just off a coastal highway in Humboldt County, a 30-minute hike takes you through a dark, verdant forest, which abruptly gives way to a clearing where hundreds of felled trees lie strewn across the ground among stumps and broken branches. On the other end of the clearing is a wall of trees, one of which has a plywood platform no bigger than a coffee table secured by ropes in the upper reaches of a towering redwood.
It is here that a small loose-knit group of tree-sitters, collectively known as the Redwood Forest Defenders, have made their stand to protect the remaining 18.5 acres of an original 100-acre timber tract of fir, pine and redwood from the Green Diamond Resource Company (Green Diamond).
Unfolding with observational scenes that parallel the rhythms of life in the forest, the film follows Lupine (they/them), one of two full-time activists anchoring the campaign, as they tread lightly on a trail, fill water bottles from a creek, quietly ascend to a tree-top platform, all accompanied by the soft background symphony of birds and wind. This routine is interrupted by the staccato sounds of heavy metal machinery that announces the logging company collecting felled timber. Perched in a tree-sit 100 feet above ground, Lupine is forced to watch this extraction play out below through the branches.
With the continual threat of logging in the timber tract, Lupine leads a small group on a night mission to raise more tree-sitting platforms as well as traverse lines, a kind of rope bridge between tree-sits. These interconnected tree-sits serve to protect a greater area because the timber company is unsure how a tree may fall if cut while tied by lines and is therefore a potential danger to loggers and activists alike.
As the summer months recede into fall, Green Diamond continues to haul out trees from the clearcut near the tree-sits. The arrival of winter brings cold and rain, but also questions about the campaign’s longevity and the personal sacrifices required in keeping watch over the forest in time measured, not by days, but by years.
Directors' Bios:
Derek Knowles is an independent documentary filmmaker and a freelance cinematographer for outlets like The New York Times, PBS Frontline, and The Washington Post. His film work has been featured on PBS, The New Yorker, the NY Times, The Atlantic, and as a Vimeo Staff Pick. His most recent film, Last Days at Paradise High, tells the story of high school seniors coming of age after the most destructive fire in American history. The film received support from the Berkeley Film Foundation, screened at festivals like San Francisco International and DocLands, and was published on The New Yorker. It will be broadcast on KQED later in summer 2021. His work has also received support from the Tribeca Film Institute, Kartemquin Films, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Derek graduated from Stanford University in 2011 and continues to work with his professor, Clayborne Carson, who heads the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Institute.
Lawrence Lerew is an Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker with a passion for character driven narratives that strive for emotional truth, cinematic beauty and cultural relevance. He is best known for the Oscar Short Listed film The Waiting Room (2012) about Oakland’s public hospital, as well as the The Force, which examined Oakland’s police department’s efforts to make reforms and premiered at Sundance in 2017.
Some of his earlier credits include editing Wounded Knee (Sundance, 2009) which revisited the American Indian Movement’s 1973 take over of sacred land and subsequent armed stand-off with the government, and the Oscar-nominated The Most Dangerous Man in America (2009) that retraced the story of Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. In 2013 he edited The Kill Team which was awarded Best Documentary Feature at The Tribeca Film Festival and nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.
As an independent filmmaker Lawrence enjoys a close relationship with PBS who have aired all his feature documentaries. He has been granted a fellowship from The Sundance Institute and serves as a ITVS mentor for young filmmakers. He recently served as a consulting editor on Elizabeth Lo’s Stray, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released by Magnolia Pictures.
- Year2022
- Runtime25 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- DirectorLawrence Lerew, Derek Knowles
Explore loss, memory, and growth though the lens of award-winning directors and writers from across the globe.
From a trailhead just off a coastal highway in Humboldt County, a 30-minute hike takes you through a dark, verdant forest, which abruptly gives way to a clearing where hundreds of felled trees lie strewn across the ground among stumps and broken branches. On the other end of the clearing is a wall of trees, one of which has a plywood platform no bigger than a coffee table secured by ropes in the upper reaches of a towering redwood.
It is here that a small loose-knit group of tree-sitters, collectively known as the Redwood Forest Defenders, have made their stand to protect the remaining 18.5 acres of an original 100-acre timber tract of fir, pine and redwood from the Green Diamond Resource Company (Green Diamond).
Unfolding with observational scenes that parallel the rhythms of life in the forest, the film follows Lupine (they/them), one of two full-time activists anchoring the campaign, as they tread lightly on a trail, fill water bottles from a creek, quietly ascend to a tree-top platform, all accompanied by the soft background symphony of birds and wind. This routine is interrupted by the staccato sounds of heavy metal machinery that announces the logging company collecting felled timber. Perched in a tree-sit 100 feet above ground, Lupine is forced to watch this extraction play out below through the branches.
With the continual threat of logging in the timber tract, Lupine leads a small group on a night mission to raise more tree-sitting platforms as well as traverse lines, a kind of rope bridge between tree-sits. These interconnected tree-sits serve to protect a greater area because the timber company is unsure how a tree may fall if cut while tied by lines and is therefore a potential danger to loggers and activists alike.
As the summer months recede into fall, Green Diamond continues to haul out trees from the clearcut near the tree-sits. The arrival of winter brings cold and rain, but also questions about the campaign’s longevity and the personal sacrifices required in keeping watch over the forest in time measured, not by days, but by years.
Directors' Bios:
Derek Knowles is an independent documentary filmmaker and a freelance cinematographer for outlets like The New York Times, PBS Frontline, and The Washington Post. His film work has been featured on PBS, The New Yorker, the NY Times, The Atlantic, and as a Vimeo Staff Pick. His most recent film, Last Days at Paradise High, tells the story of high school seniors coming of age after the most destructive fire in American history. The film received support from the Berkeley Film Foundation, screened at festivals like San Francisco International and DocLands, and was published on The New Yorker. It will be broadcast on KQED later in summer 2021. His work has also received support from the Tribeca Film Institute, Kartemquin Films, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Derek graduated from Stanford University in 2011 and continues to work with his professor, Clayborne Carson, who heads the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Institute.
Lawrence Lerew is an Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker with a passion for character driven narratives that strive for emotional truth, cinematic beauty and cultural relevance. He is best known for the Oscar Short Listed film The Waiting Room (2012) about Oakland’s public hospital, as well as the The Force, which examined Oakland’s police department’s efforts to make reforms and premiered at Sundance in 2017.
Some of his earlier credits include editing Wounded Knee (Sundance, 2009) which revisited the American Indian Movement’s 1973 take over of sacred land and subsequent armed stand-off with the government, and the Oscar-nominated The Most Dangerous Man in America (2009) that retraced the story of Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. In 2013 he edited The Kill Team which was awarded Best Documentary Feature at The Tribeca Film Festival and nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.
As an independent filmmaker Lawrence enjoys a close relationship with PBS who have aired all his feature documentaries. He has been granted a fellowship from The Sundance Institute and serves as a ITVS mentor for young filmmakers. He recently served as a consulting editor on Elizabeth Lo’s Stray, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released by Magnolia Pictures.
- Year2022
- Runtime25 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- DirectorLawrence Lerew, Derek Knowles