Click here to learn more about The Forest for the Trees and to view clips of the movie.
JB: How long has the process of making this film taken you?
BM: I started making the film in 2002, finished one cut that I edited myself in 2005, then went back in 2006 and reworked it with editor, Susan Korda. I was able to do that with the support of Chicken & Egg Pictures and filmmaker, Judith Helfand. But finishing the actual film itself, as any documentary filmmaker will tell you, is only one part of the process. Getting the film out there to audiences and finding ways for it to be used in the service of social justice is a whole other process—one that I’m still in! We are working on bringing it to law schools this fall.
JB: Can you say a few words about Judi Bari’s legacy?
BM: Judi Bari, in her fight to preserve the ancient redwoods, was an early voice in the environmental movement saying that the environment is not a rich people’s issue, that working to protect it is not about the love of hiking. She saw environmental issues as fundamentally economic ones, and she pointed to the ways that working people were actually the first ones to suffer from environmental devastation. In this case, it was the loggers and millworkers who faced terrible rates of unemployment after the over-cutting of the trees.
We saw the connections she was making very clearly for instance with Katrina, after which I think more people in this country have begun to understand that when chaos hits because of how we’ve messed with the environment, poor people of color are going to be on the front lines. So I think the connections she was making back in the 80s are turning out to be crucial for anyone concerned about social or economic justice. We all have to think about the environment now.
Around the world, especially in poor people’s movements in third world countries, the connections between exploitation of natural resources, environmental devastation, and people’s survival have been quite obvious all along, and there is not such a sense of separation between environmentalism, labor, human rights, peace, and feminism, etc. But here, the way the environmental movement formed was very compartmentalized. You have huge organizations with tons of resources like the Sierra Club out there talking about saving the spotted owl, but never about the fact that loggers and millworkers have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, Big Timber treats them like crap, and clear cutting is causing not just climate change, desertification, and all that, but unemployment, too. Then in the cities people are saying, “Huh? Owls? What?” while these under-resourced neighborhood groups are trying to deal with environmental racism and asthma without any backup.
I think Judi saw the huge problems with this, the overwhelming shortsightedness of that limited way of thinking about the environment, and she made people start to see the bigger picture. Now, with the war (which, by the way, Judi predicted before her death in 1997), an energy crisis looming, and all the questions and statistics floating around about the peak and decline of oil production, etc., this whole emergency actually feels like an emergency to more people. It’s become painfully obvious that Judi was right, that this is not about hikers and nature lovers, that ultimately the quality of regular people’s every day, every moment, experience, is deeply linked to natural resources and how they are managed.
JB: Has making this film about your dad and his work brought you closer together?
BM: Yes. Making a film about his work made me pay attention to it in a way that I don’t think I really had before. I always knew he did good work, and I believed in it, but because his cases were about police brutality and government misconduct, it was always really painful to hear him talk about them. Being behind the camera gave me a kind of distance that allowed for more curiosity and engagement as an adult and a concerned citizen, as well as a daughter. So I really got to see him through new eyes and it increased my admiration for him and my belief in his life choices, though I still recognize that some of those choices had a very high cost in terms of my childhood and our family.
