From mindbombs to firebombs: The narrative strategies of radical environmental activism documentaries

Abstract

The article examines the narrative strategies of two documentary films that give insight into the direct-action campaigns of two radical environmental groups; Jerry Rothwell's How to Change the World (2015) recounts the birth of Greenpeace and its development of “mindbomb” communication strategies. Marshall Curry's If a Tree Falls (2011) chronicles the rise and fall of the Earth Liberation Front and its tactics of ecotage. Situating both films in the larger history of radical environmentalism in the United States, the article explores the affective side of their rhetoric on two levels: on the level of the activists' own communication strategies and on the level of the films made about these activists and their strategies. It argues that making a documentary film about radical environmentalist groups raises moral questions for the filmmaker and that, each in his way, Rothwell and Curry have both made films that straddle the line between ostensible objectivity and sympathetic advocacy for the individuals they portray.