'We Speak for the Forests' screens for free today

Kirk Boxleitner | Apr 20, 20230

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The Skyline Drive-In Theater is presenting a free screening at 8 tonight of a locally made documentary film, "We Speak for the Forests."

The film's director, Mason County Climate Justice co-founder and CEO Zephyr Elise, talked to the Shelton-Mason County Journal about the filmmaking process, which began when Union resident and fellow MCCJ member James Bell spent four months documenting the clear-cut logging near his home.

Two years after Elise took over the film that Bell started, "We Speak for the Forests" has screened at film festivals in Sweden and India, with its French premiere coming up at the Nice International Film Festival next month. It's set to be sponsored by the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits in Oakland, California, at the New Parkway Theater on June 3.

According to Elise, the biggest obstacles to the production were the same climate change effects discussed in the film, including wildfires, flooding and windstorms, which made it difficult, even dangerous, to conduct filming.

The production's timing also coincided with the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when vaccines were starting to be made available and when Elise said the film's "production collective" was striving to safeguard elders and immunocompromised collaborators.

Elise emphasized their efforts to ensure the representation of groups of people often not represented in such films.

"This film was made as a labor of love, with most contributors offering their time and talents for free," Elise said. "Yet, there were a few pieces of making the film that required money. So, gathering the necessary financial support to make and finish this film was also a big challenge."

Some local politicians, including retired state Sen. Tim Sheldon and state Rep. Dan Griffey, as well as Heidi McCutcheon, former president of the Shelton-Mason County Chamber of Commerce, appear in the film.

Local climate and forest experts include Salmon Center board member and longtime science teacher Michael "Firefly" Siptroth, youth forest activist Joshua Wright, and Skokomish cultural keepers Kimberly Miller and Winona Plant.

"I dream this film can help move the minds and hearts of policymakers, industry CEOs, government officials, and viewers globally, to more fully understand the complex, vital functions that healthy, intact legacy forests provide," said Elise, who said legacy forests are "the old growth of tomorrow," offering "structurally complex, biodiverse maturity" to benefit people, wildlife, ecosystems and climate stability alike. "I hope to inspire many more speakers for the forests, so we can find a future where life is more important than profit."

Elise touted healthier forestry practices as essential for livable wages and safe working conditions in timber communities, and she warned that current clear-cutting practices in legacy forests will exhaust the existing supply of large-diameter lumber in five years or less.

"We must find regenerative solutions that support both the environment and workers," Elise said. "This film helps people start to imagine that future."

Tying the local to the global, Elise said protecting Mason County's oldest forests is "the single most effective and economical tool we have" to combat climate change, given that, "in their natural, healthy, biodiverse, mature state," the county's forests capture "more than twice as much" carbon per acre as the Amazon rainforest.

Elise cited the "deep and enduring" emotional connections that rites such as ancient Skokomish tree teachings provide between peoples and their cultures to this day.

"Our misunderstandings of forest ecology are largely due to the misinformation injected by industry-funded pseudo-scientific research that fuels bad policy decisions in industry and government," Elise said. "These bad decisions have real and continuing negative impacts on everyone in Washington state and the Pacific Northwest, not just Mason County residents."

Elise said her father and grandfather were both loggers, born in Seattle and employed in Lewis County.

"My grandfather was a hand-logger in the early part of the 20th century, who organized logging families against the injustices of logging corporations 50 to 60 years ago," said Elise, who's also descended from southern indigenous nations that had "a deep, long-standing relationship" with the ancient forests. "My ancestors watched their world change, as our forests were stolen. It was an honor to make space for our local Skokomish host nation to share their wisdom and teachings, and weave together all these important voices, so we can save our precious forests."

You can contact [email protected] to arrange a screening of your own. Gates at the Skyline Drive-In open at 7 tonight and the movie starts at 8 p.m.