Indeed, watching the film is a deeply moving experience. Ripper, whose last film, Scared Sacred, won the Genie award (Canada’s Oscar) for best feature documentary, elicits candid interviews from the eloquent, poignantly dedicated Julia Butterfly Hill, American civil rights activist John Lewis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Thich Nhat Hanh, among others. But he also reaches us through his cinematic artfulness. In Oaxaca, Mexico, he zooms in on the poetic image of a woman dressed as an angel, walking by skittish riot police to pantomime washing corruption out of the Mexican flag. In Los Angeles, he covers the eviction of South Central Farm (a communal organic-food farm that represented rebirth after L.A.’s violent 1992 riots) by first letting us know just what the gardeners are losing: a quiet, beautiful, spiritual world, its trees and flowers composed for the camera with a nature lover’s tenderness (Ripper grew up on British Columbia’s lush Sunshine Coast).
Fierce Light has certainly enchanted film festival audiences: it won the Special Jury Prize and the National Film Board Audience Award at the 2008 Vancouver International Film Festival, and was an official selection of the Hot Docs International Film Festival in Toronto last year. It was just released on DVD in Canada and the United States.
Ripper is currently transmuting that recognition into funding for his next film, Evolved Love, as well as workshops he hopes will help people “unleash their own ‘fierce light’ and become catalysts of transformation.” He paused from that work to answer a few of our questions.
Are the “tremors of a volcanic spirit” you’ve felt over the last few years different from those of the ’60s?
We weren’t quite ready in the ’60s, and what came out of them was the ‘me generation.’ There was the birth of the human potential movement, the idea that the dominant culture was not letting us live up to our full potential, but that idea got perverted and turned into another kind of selfishness. It became all about my spiritual growth, being separate from interconnectedness; and that ‘me’ focus was only promoted by the consumer culture.
We need to shift into the ‘we’ generation. If we don’t, we’re going to suffer tremendously. We have to realize that there is no free lunch, that we can’t keep using the rest of the world as our garbage dump and our resource bank. We never could sustain that. But we were shortsighted, living in the next quarter—like a corporation.
Why doesn’t everyone facing human rights breaches take action? What elements have to be there to push people over the edge?
I guess it’s a different story for every person. One of the keys for me, and one of the lessons of spiritual activism, is trying to go beyond anger and despair to a place of ‘love in action,’ as Martin Luther King put it. And that has a different energetic force; you recognize the interconnectedness of everything and don’t get trapped in the overwhelm of, ‘I can’t save the world so I won’t do anything.’ Do your part and do it well, from your heart. We need to step into what our part is. And we can do that by having a sense of meaning and purpose.
Consumer culture diverts that sense of meaning; we find meaning through buying stuff. But that only creates more want and a cycle of addiction. We’re all caught in it. No judgment here. It’s like we’ve gone to sleep. How do we break through? Sometimes it takes a crisis. ‘This is not abstract anymore. This isn’t just happening to them.’
Was 9/11 a catalyzing crisis?
9/11 was a missed opportunity. We didn’t get a chance to despair and turn that into compassion. The sadness was bankrolled into fear mongering. Fear is the polar opposite to love. True love could be seen as fearlessness. Fear is a weapon used against us and as a manipulation.
Do you find protesting the most important kind of activism?
Protesting is not the most important kind of activism, but it is the most visible. Fierce Light looks at how can we make protesting more compassionate. Protesting can’t come from anger. We do sometimes need to say no, like when an urban garden or a last species is threatened. We need to withhold. Protesting is not for everyone, though. Participating in it is not a mark of how good an activist you are; it’s how bold you’re willing to be. It’s more about temperament. For me, it’s, ‘how do we build a new, sustainable community’? By recognizing an interconnectedness, sharing resources, shrinking our carbon footprints, linking communities, creating another world that is an autonomous zone outside the capitalist culture. And you create it by living it. Relate from a place of compassion. Redefine the power structures. Refuse to come from a place of power over someone or something else. The way you treat a taxi driver—that can be your activism. I’m a media activist—through the films I make and my Web presence. It’s easy to be an activist online because you can so quickly spread awareness.
What did you hope to accomplish with this film?
I wanted to give audiences a visceral taste of fierce life, to taste what Gandhi called ‘soul force.’ They needed to know what industrial strength spirituality looks like. It takes you through this journey and part of your heart does break open. We need fierceness in this era. Fearlessness. Sacred warriors. I figured that if I show people what sacred warriors look like—Julia Butterfly Hill, John Lewis—they would be better equipped for this era and not fall into nihilism or cynicism or despair.
You’re not going to make it through this era with false optimism, or by burying your head in the sand. The most meaningful thing is to take action, be of service; but do what gives you joy and doesn’t feel like a burden. That’s how to have a fulfilling life. I hope the film gives people inspiration, as I hope my ‘Shine Your Fierce Light’ workshops will. In the workshops I try to help people unwrap their gifts. Everyone has gifts to offer this planet; and the universe is dying to seem them. So bring them on; not anything that feels counterintuitive, yet something that might mean stepping out of your comfort zone.
Is violent protest ever in order?
I haven’t seen a good example of violence working, but I can’t claim to speak for anyone on that matter; sometimes someone’s back is against the wall. In the retreat on nonviolent communication I just attended, Marshall Rosenberg talked about the use of force. Is it coming out of a place of reactiveness or anger? If you’re only playing out your own stuff against the state, then you’re probably not ready.
When did you yourself first feel called to protest something?
I started when I was 13, when I became aware of environmental threats such as spraying. I was part of a group of students that held community meetings after school; we also got permission to run a cable station that continues to raise awareness today. I made my first documentary when I was 14, about the Shah of Iran’s overthrow. I was interested in that because I had been raised in the Baha’i faith, and we were being persecuted in Iran in the wake of the revolution.
What would Brad Will say to viewers who see the film and think, see, it’s too dangerous to protest; look what happened to Brad. (Will was a fellow media activist who was shot to death while covering the civil unrest in Oaxaca; Ripper includes Will’s last footage in Fierce Light.)
Brad would say, don’t do what I did. Or, do what I did. Those of us in the west have a choice. There are many countries where just to speak out will get you killed. Personally, I’m no longer putting myself in life-threatening situations. For most of us, that’s not our calling. Brad had a crazy streak in him that made him a lovable, laughing, dancing rebel who took great risks. That’s the wonderful thing about diversity; we need all types to stay strong and healthy.
What are you working on now?
Evolved Love [the last film in a trilogy that includes Scared Sacred and Fierce Light]. I’m in the research and fundraising stage. It’s going to be a profoundly hopeful film, and a film that looks at, how do we heal our society’s split from nature? How can the climate crisis become the greatest love story on Earth…a reunion? I think the movement Paul Hawken called ‘humanity’s immune response to a planet in crisis’ will drive that love story. The climate crisis, because it cuts across all borders, can become a tremendously unifying force.
To order a DVD of Fierce Light or to find local screenings of the film, visit www.fiercelight.org. For information about “Shine Your Fierce Light” workshops, visit www.velcrowripper.com.
