The necessity of sustainable filmmaking: Production notes from Palestine, Burkina Faso, and Zanzibar

This chapter makes the case for seeing sites of practice-based film education and training as crucial contexts for the development of sustainable filmmaking practices. My claim is that if aspiring practitioners are given an opportunity to reflect on the environmental costs of their craft and are introduced to alternative practices of a more sustainable nature, compliance with desirable standards, or, in the absence of these, a push for such standards, become likely. Drawing on practitioner interviews with filmmakers associated with Filmlab Palestine, Filmlab Zanzibar, and Imagine in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, I argue that traditionally less resource-intensive sites and practices of filmmaking are promising with reference to the goal of effecting a green transition in filmmaking. The point is to highlight the value of pursuing discussions about green filmmaking in a properly inclusive manner. With their recurring emphasis on creativity under constraint and a conception of filmmaking as contributing to the public good, leading filmmakers in the Global South, I argue, deserve to be clearly heard in debates regarding a green future for filmmaking. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.