On the bank of the Yakoun River in Haida
Gwaii, British Columbia, used to stand a unique tree known by the locals as The
Golden Spruce. It had an intriguing
genetic mutation that let to its needles to look golden amongst the other green
trees surrounding it, which led to generations of indigenous Haida people who
lived on the islands giving it a mythic significance and naming it Kiid K’iyaas.
On 20th January 1997, a
disillusioned former ‘forest technician’ called Grant Hadwin took some final
selfies in front of the sacred tree and then expertly felled it. The focus point of his anger was the
seemingly arbitrary protection of the Golden Spruce tree amongst the rest of
the doomed rainforest, and the motive behind his ecoterrorism was to draw
attention to the ecological injustice and gain support for the protection of the
whole forest. Needless to say, his
actions didn’t go down well with the locals…
Hadwin’s
Judgement tells the
story of the divisive dendrologist through interviews with friends and colleagues, interspersed with an
actor (Doug Chapman) recreating his
actions and providing internal
monologues based on Hadwin’s writings.
This provides a kind of emotional intensity and connection to the man
that a ‘straight-up’ documentary might lack. It also allows for more cinematic
set pieces such as when Grant finally cracks and the scene descends into
mechanical-crane’s-eye-view of destructive logging and fisheye close-up of
Hadwin’s torment.
The introduction includes long, deep
focus, plush tracking shots of beautiful rainforests, which forces you to fall
in love with the landscape just as Hadwin did, before it goes on to tell the
rest of the story. Which is told from
both former loggers and Haida natives, who obviously have very different relationships
with the forest.
Ultimately the film is a meditation on
Anthropocentric and Kincentric philosophies and the struggle between the insatiable
perpetual economic growth demanded of Western Capitalism and more spiritual beliefs
in reincarnation and the importance of harmony in nature. Not by any means an unprecedented topic for documentarians,
but an essential message wrapped in a very human narrative of (mis)judgement.
Hadwin's Judgement by Sasha Snow is playing at Raindance this year, more info here
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