This is a heartfelt account of the campaign to stop Gunns from logging Tasmania's native forests. What makes it even more moving is that the filmmaker, Heidi Lee Douglas, was personally involved in the campaign. She and 19 others were sued by Gunns for $6.4 million for supposedly conspiring to destroy the company, As Defendant Number 5, she would have lost everything if Gunns had won the case.
As it turned out, the company not only lost in court, it also lost in the marketplace, as bank after bank refused to fund the logging project. It wasn't the twenty activists on trial who lost everything but Gunns itself. As the narrator (Heidi herself) says in the film's closing lines, the company went out of business because it refused listen to what people in Tasmania wanted.
What makes this film so moving, so raw, is that Heidi filmed herself at her most vulnerable - like when it looked like she would lose her newly-purchased home. Yet she pressed on with the campaign, as the brave individual she is, and came out with a legal as well as moral victory.
If you haven't seen this film and care about native forests, check it out. It inspires as well as informs.
As it turned out, the company not only lost in court, it also lost in the marketplace, as bank after bank refused to fund the logging project. It wasn't the twenty activists on trial who lost everything but Gunns itself. As the narrator (Heidi herself) says in the film's closing lines, the company went out of business because it refused listen to what people in Tasmania wanted.
What makes this film so moving, so raw, is that Heidi filmed herself at her most vulnerable - like when it looked like she would lose her newly-purchased home. Yet she pressed on with the campaign, as the brave individual she is, and came out with a legal as well as moral victory.
If you haven't seen this film and care about native forests, check it out. It inspires as well as informs.
