DIRECTORS STATEMENT
‘Stopping offshore oil and gas development is an issue that matters utterly. To chronicle grassroots, citizen-led refusal of consent the breadth of a coastline is an enormous privilege. There is a palpable momentum against ocean injustice because it becomes climate injustice, affecting us all. Emissions, destruction, cultural dispossession, and injustice are not inevitable. Our coastline and its estuaries do not have to end up oiled, our seas do not have to absorb the costs of more CO2, nor should our sacred sea be despoiled. This ‘oceans-not-oil’ resistance is transforming silence into language, bridging differences, and giving us grounds to act and define a future together.’
Janet Solomon
MFA, cum laude
Director & Producer
Janet Solomon is a passionate environmental and climate activist, artist, and award-winning filmmaker. Transcending the boundaries between activism and art, Solomon’s compelling interventionist approach includes forging links between collectives, mobilizing public awareness, fostering collective action, and documentary film critique. Her unique technique combines evocative auditory sequences with a painterly visual aesthetic. By making the extremity of unliveable conditions imposed by offshore petroleum development on those who live in and depend on the ocean understandable, Solomon’s process provokes public dialogue, and the imagination to envision another future and to advocate for it.
Viki van den Barselaar-Smith
BSc Marketing; BBA Film Minor
Editor, Cinematographer
Viki van den Barselaar-Smith has been involved with every aspect of the film journalism and documentaries from producing, directing, filming and editing. Recent highlights are editing, and at times co-producing, for Carte Blanche for the past 9 years, with a number of programmes having won journalism awards. She has edited award-winning documentaries for the United Nations, Snake City for National Geographic, and produced work for The Smithsonian.
JONATHAN M. BLAIR
Composer
Jonathan M. Blair is a composer, pianist, musicologist and conductor.
His commissions include, opera, concertos, chamber music, song cycles, stop motion film scores, a symphony, as well as installation pieces and avant-garde collaborations. His work has received awards from institutions, universities, film festivals and governmental departments.
In addition to being recognised as one of the most prolific composers working in concert music today, Jonathan is also a musicologist which he also holds post gradute degrees in.
‘I’ve always found it fundamental to recognise the cultural importances that an artist is faced with when addressing a new work. Beethoven’s 9th has continued to be a driving force for change, even as it ascends the cultural resonance of its inception. When Janet outlined how she wanted the theme to be weaved through the magnificent tapestry of commentary, picture, color and sound, it becomes a clear anchor of resilience where the music passes through the theme in more turbulent, conflicted or hopeless themes. In that way, Beethoven continues to be a voice for social justice centuries later.’
JOHAN PRINSLOO
Audio Engineer
Johan Prinsloo has been working as a specialist broadcast audio engineer for the past 13 years and has been involved in many international productions ranging from feature films, reality television shows, television adverts and National Geographic films.
‘I have been lucky enough to do work for people in England, Qatar, Australia, America and the UAE and even some local personalities like Athol Fugard. I possess a wide skill-set providing clients with anything from sound design, foley, film scoring and surround mixing. I consider myself an environmentalist and have been fortunate to have worked on a quite a number of nature films now. I am grateful for having been apart of this project and I hope it brings about positive change for our oceans.’