Edge of Nature World Premiere Opens BBFF2023
The World Premiere of The Edge of Nature by Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmaker Josh Fox is the Opening Night Film at the Byron Bay Film Festival at Byron Palace Cinemas on October 20.
Fox’s film Gasland had a profound effect on the Byron/Northern Rivers Community. The film spread awareness of fracking world-wide and helped to inspire the local resistance which defeated the frackers at Bentley.
“As a filmmaker Josh Fox is a change-maker; he is able to convey the importance of each individual in being part of the change, and take that message to the world," says Festival Director J’aimee Skippon-Volke. "With Australia already in drought and the threat of bushfires at extreme levels, this film is the rallying-cry we need right now.
“A World Premiere is always a big event and this year’s Gala Opening Night is a great opportunity to support Josh and the other dedicated filmmakers before the screening, and to unite the community.”
Fox has a special connection with Australian audiences: “I had the great fortune of being able to tour Gasland to Australia in 2010, and I witnessed the profound strength of the environmental movement there,” he says.
“The anti-fracking farmers behind the Lock the Gate campaign were some of the strongest and most adamant activists I have ever met. I felt so at home, so welcome and so encouraged by their spirit and vehemence.”
Fox filmed some parts of Gasland II in Australia on subsequent trips and says he “fell in love with the passion, energy and commitment of the people of Australia”.
“Byron Bay Film Festival is the perfect place for me to premiere this film because of the strong commitment of the audience and the region to conservation and action to protect the Earth. We are building a worldwide movement to stop climate change, and that means we have to see all the things we have in common and build international solidarity.
“I hope The Edge of Nature can spark a conversation about the philosophy that runs through our environmentalism like an underground spring — that we are a part of nature, that we are not separate from the planet, and we have to work in collaboration with the Earth and all living things. We are nature rising up to defend itself, and that struggle must resonate across the planet, on every continent."
Fox will be flying in from New York to present his film, which is a unique and compelling hybrid – at once a record of a deeply personal journey through Covid, a nature documentary, an examination of intergenerational trauma, and a call to action.
In 2020, severely debilitated and suffering neurological symptoms such as brain fog from long Covid, Fox isolated himself in a tiny cabin in his beloved Pennsylvania forest, in the hope that simplicity and the forces of nature would heal him.
Accompanied only by his trademark banjo, the songs of Pete Seeger, a family of obstinate beavers and a restless creative impulse, he underwent a dark night of the soul, learning tough lessons in inspiration and resilience.
Alongside his awe at the tenaciousness and beauty of nature, his nine-month isolation and bouts of despair brought up the legacy of the Nazi genocide that swept away most of his ancestral family – a trauma prompted in part by the distant sound of machine-guns being fired at night.
In The Edge of Nature Fox finds a parallel between this preparedness for violence – alarmingly on the rise amongst the Far Right – and the ecocide being practised by the insatiably greedy and expansionist industrial billionaire and corporate class.
At the same time, the pandemic delivered the Anthropause, a time when planes were grounded, cars went undriven and populations were forced to live a simpler, quieter life. The skies and waters cleared, animals found a safe place to be. For the first time in history, world-wide emissions were reduced enough to halt climate change: the possibility of recovery became real.
While the premise of The Edge of Nature is the story of his healing from long Covid, Fox says “it’s not just about healing myself. The Earth, our forests, the climate, and all of our ecosystems are deeply scarred, sick and wounded. We are all traumatised and endangered by the worsening climate crisis. This film puts forth the radical notion that we cannot heal ourselves without healing the planet. And we cannot heal the planet without healing ourselves”.
“It has taken me a long time to be brave enough to understand what this film is really about. Until this year I was too scared, confused and traumatised to include my process of healing from long Covid in the film. It has been a long road of recovery.”
But recovery did take place – made possible not only by the examples all around him of the tenaciousness of nature, but also Fox’s humour, empathy, and a determination to stare down the darkness and endure through it to find light on the other side.
The film adds to Fox’s substantial body of work. Internationally recognised as a leader on the issue of fracking and climate change, he has premiered three films on HBO, two on Netflix, and his work has been broadcast world-wide to hundreds of millions of viewers. He has appeared regularly on MSNBC, FOX, CNN, The Daily Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, PBS, TYT and many other outlets as a commentator.
In 2017 Fox produced, co-directed and co-wrote Awake, A Dream From Standing Rock with indigenous filmmakers Doug Good Feather and Myron Dewey, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
They came together again for The Edge of Nature, the result of their intense six-year study of the question of recovery from intergenerational trauma – “an alliance born of healing our mutual genocidal history – theirs as survivors of the American Genocide, and myself as a son of survivors of the Nazi holocaust”, Fox says. “This film is also dedicated to Myron, who was brutally taken from us last year under suspicious circumstances.”
The Edge of Nature is a worthy gift to Myron, and to all of us – a triumphant artistic response to the scary and often overwhelming events taking place on a rapidly changing planet.
Despite the gravity of its subject matter, the film is ultimately a celebration of the human spirit, and a fitting choice to kick off the celebration of life on planet Earth that BBFF represents.
