Alter Natives: filmmaker Pinny Grylls is asking Gen Z to start filmmaking, and raise their voice on climate and race

Filmmaker Pinny Grylls talks about her two film projects Hear My Voice and Hear on Earth - and asks young adults to respond to her documentary call

One silver lining of my lockdown was the success of a Kickstarter launched to fund a collaborative feature film writing project that puts at its heart the voices of young black people growing up in London.

Born out of my frustration with how young black boys are stereotyped, Hear My Voice tells the story of TJ, a 15-year-old Congolese boy growing up in Hackney that dreams of becoming an opera singer.

My background is in documentary filmmaking and ethnography - and has always concerned itself with listening to under or misrepresented communities. Mostly this stems from my curiosity to hear stories told from new perspectives, but also because I am very well aware that it is not so much the politicians but the writers and directors of popular cinema and tv that get to define our cultural worldview.

And so in Summer 2020 as Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests simultaneously raged across the world I found myself in the privileged position of being able to listen deeply to the stories of five very special young people of African descent growing up in Britain today.

In the following weeks, our ‘Zoom Writers Room’ attempted to shape the story of our main protagonist. They did this by piecing together stories from their own lives and that of their parents - and I myself, a middle-aged white woman learnt a great deal. Through our conversations, our story slowly became a beautiful, complex and compelling testament to why black lives matter so much to us all.

They told me stories of African immigrant parents whose qualifications were not believed. Of doctors that had to work as cleaners to feed their family. They told me about the sting of humiliation they felt when being constantly stopped and searched, and of white strangers crossing the street when they walked with their friends to play football in the park.

They told me of their frustration with the whole concept of ‘Black History Month’ and how in the remaining months of the year there was no mention of colonialism or African history in history classes taught in Hackney or Peckham to an almost entirely African and Caribbean class.

We talked about white saviours and asked ourselves if I myself was trying to be one by leading writing sessions for young black writers. Some of their stories stung, some of them made me laugh out loud and some left me with a heaviness in my chest that was hard to shift.

Overwhelmingly I was glad to have had the privilege of having these conversations with them at this time in history. Our task is now to bring it all together in a script that does these conversations justice.

The nourishment I received from hearing young voices grow stronger through storytelling has continued this month with a brand new filmmaking project, this time concerning the other big issue of our time - climate change and the rapid degradation of our oceans.

Hear On Earth is a free international collaborative filmmaking project that supports young people from London, Taiwan and New York aged 14-19 to make films about the ocean and climate change, with a view to setting up a genuine long term dialogue between young people on these three continents about the past, present and future of our climate and oceans. 

Sponsored by Magic Box and the Chan Center in New York, Hear on Earth will help young people form small international teams, and pair them up with Ocean and Climate Scientists. They will then be given the skills needed by filmmaking professionals to make their own films. 

The first few applications are starting to pour in - and just like my last project I am humbled by their stories, honesty and determination for change. This is a generation who will feel the greatest impact of climate change and degradation of the oceans.

Led by Greta and the Fridays for Future Movement they feel themselves part of history and want to contribute. Most importantly they want to work across borders - as after all - the oceans and climate connects us all.

On the eve of a toxic US election that seems like something out of a long-dead past and worldview, both the young writers in the Hear My Voice project and the young applicants for Hear on Earth give me hope that this generation wants to have honest, open conversations across the borders of race and nationality. They want to communicate their ideas and tell their stories.

They just need a little bit of help with the skills needed to write and make those films and it has been my privilege to be part of the team facilitating that.

Apply here if you are aged 14-19 and want to to be part of Hear on Earth. Applicants need to have an email address and access to Zoom, and have interest in media-making, science and social action. The deadline for application is 7th Nov 2020.