“Anyone who can throw a hatchet and sue you is a force to be reckoned with.”
That’s how renowned climate activist Bill McKibben describes Caleb Behn, the charismatic subject of the Canadian feature documentary Fractured Land, which will run at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 3 at the Salmar Classic Theatre.
The screening – which will be followed by a panel discussion with the film’s co-director Damien Gillis, focusing on LNG, fracking, and BC’s energy economy – is co-hosted by Shuswap Environmental Action Society.
The tour comes on the heels of the film’s award-winning run at the Vancouver International Film Festival, where it claimed Best BC Film and the VIFF Impact Canadian Audience Award.
With some of the world’s largest fracking operations on his territory, Behn, a young indigenous lawyer from northeast B.C., confronts the fractures within his community, his family and himself as he struggles to reconcile traditional teachings with the law to protect the land.
The coming-of-age story, produced and directed by first-time feature filmmakers Damien Gillis and Fiona Rayher – in association with CBC’s documentary Channel and Knowledge Network – follows Behn as he grapples with the impact of hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) on his territory.
Caleb’s mother is a high-ranking oil and gas officer trying to make change from the inside; his father a residential school survivor and staunch environmentalist. Intelligent, articulate and speaking with conviction, Behn has learned how to straddle these two different worlds, whether hunting beaver, throwing hatchets or studying legal briefs.
