Beasts of the Southern Wild.

The last film in the 'Green Screen' series at the Phoenix was Beasts of the Southern Wild. 

The student climate strikers began the evening with a very inspiring talk about why they are making a global protest against climate change and why we should all try to make a difference.   

Lucia and Amy said they held a protest in Leicester on the 15^th March to raise awareness about climate change.  They gave out leaflets to people walking by – some people accepted the leaflets, some didn’t but Lucia said it was the 70% who stopped to talk to them, supported them but just accepted climate change – that really frightened her.  People who said yes, we know it is true but we have no power to change or stop it, so can do nothing to prevent it happening.  People in the street thought that they alone as individuals had no way of stopping the progress of climate change.  Lucia agreed with them she said as individuals we can’t stop it but we have to come together to fight this – if people don’t care about themselves, they should care about their children’s future, their grandchildren’s future.  She said we need to come together to fight this and we need to make governments listen and help before it is too late. 

We then watched a film about an area of land called ‘the bathtub’ which was due to go under water when the ice cap melts and the water level rises.  The film was about the families who lived there knowing that the water level would rise.  A wall had been built to protect people from the rising water but some families were on the wrong side of the wall…. Some of them left, taking as many of their belongings as they could and some of them said they would stay as it was their home and where they made a living.  The rains came though and the water level rose – some of the people survived and some didn’t. 

It is difficult for me to tell the story because it broke my heart – watching family’s homes (albeit very poor homes) going under water as climate change hits with such devastating results.  I think it was even more traumatic because children were involved and just makes me ask – how can we let this happen?

As the Student Strikers said at the beginning of the film – we must stop this – we must get governments to listen…. Lucia and Amy said they worried about the 70% who were indifferent – who say we can’t do anything about climate change – we can’t get people to listen and change things….  But one thing is for sure – we will keep trying, striving for change, striving to make the Governments of the world wake up to the reality of what will happen if we don’t sort this out.

We will keep trying to make Governments listen, trying to get society to change its ways, we will keep trying – and we will win – because we have to…..