On July 27, the DGA Special Projects Committee treated members to a special screening of Directors Bonni Cohen & Jon Shenk’s new documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. Presented in the Guild’s Los Angeles Theater, the evening featured a discussion with the filmmakers and the subject of the film, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, moderated by DGA Special Projects Committee Chair Jeremy Kagan.
Following an introduction by Kagan, the audience viewed the film which picks up ten years after Director Davis Guggenheim’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, brought the climate crisis into the heart of popular culture. With the stakes now higher than ever, cameras follow former Vice President Gore in his tireless fight, traveling around the world training an army of climate champions and influencing international climate policy.
After the screening, Cohen, Shenk and Gore sat down with Kagan for a discussion about the film and where we are today compared to where we were a decade ago when its predecessor raised the world consciousness to the dangers of climate change.
“In terms of our working relationship [with Gore], we posed the idea of doing this behind the scenes film, which was very different from the first [An Inconvenient Truth],” said co-director Bonni Cohen. Over the course of two years, the directors accompanied Mr. Gore around the world. The directing team had collaborated previously on the documentary feature Audrie & Daisy, and took a verite approach to this film. Jon Shenk stated, “One camera is all you need in a verite scene. You edit in your head, and of course, Bonni and I work together so she can point out things that I’m not seeing and I can see sometimes that what she doesn’t see.” Cohen added, “We have a shorthand with one another. We can communicate non-verbally across a room.”
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Eye Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. “The title ‘Truth to Power’ really for us…we really like the basic historical context of it, which is this phrase that comes from the Quaker movement, but then really came to life in a significant way during the Civil Rights movement in our country, speaking truth to power,” said Jon Shenk. Cohen continued, “I feel like the work that documentary is doing now is very much about truth to power. It’s taking stories that can move people emotionally and when you come out the other end, you’re looking at whatever the subject was, or whatever the character was, through a different lens. You’ve had a perspective shift of some kind.”
In terms of goals for the film, former Vice President Gore said, “I think that the climate movement is right now at that tipping point. And my fondest hope for Bonni and Jon’s movie is that it will contribute significantly to the momentum to get us across that tipping point.” He concluded, “We may be in an age looked back upon as the golden age of documentary films because it’s the only medium where people are in a communal setting giving their attention for 90 to 100 minutes or so to absorb a well-crafted, thoughtful, brutally fact-checked presentation that at its best has a heart and soul.”
In addition to An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Cohen’s work includes the documentaries Audrie & Daisy, The Rape of Europa and Kofi Annan: Eye of the Storm; and episodes of the series National Geographic Explorer and Wild on the Set. Shenk’s filmography also includes Audrie & Daisy and the documentary The Island President. Shenk was awarded the 2004 Independent Spirit Award for his documentary Lost Boys of Sudan. Former Vice President Gore spends the majority of his time as chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit organization he founded that is focused on solutions for the global climate crisis. He is also the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and most recently, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. Gore was the 2007 Nobel Prize Laureate for informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.
About the Committee:
Special Projects is the educational and cultural arm of the Directors Guild of America. It provides opportunities for creative exchange with programs for members and industry colleagues to celebrate the history and achievements of its members, advance their professional skills, and prepare them for the technological changes of the future. The Special Projects Committee is chaired by Jeremy Kagan. The Committee Members are Jon Amiel, Kathryn Bigelow, Jim Drake, Victoria Hochberg, Randal Kleiser, Shawn Levy, David Nutter, Alexander Payne, Barbara Roche, Oz Scott, Arthur Allan Seidelman, Christina Stevens, Ondi Timoner, Chuck Workman, and Susan Zwerman.