Ceibo – In Focus
Ceibo Pacha Light surfing in Ecuador Photo Maddie Meddings
We’ve been celebrating the work of Maddie Meddings and Lucy Small from day one, and so we are delighted to premiere the Director’s Cut of Ceibo at this year’s festival. Professional surfers and activists, Pacha Light and Lucy Small journey across Ecuador to learn from women, deeply connected to their landscapes and communities, how we can better coexist with our planet.
From the land rights struggles of the Andes and the Amazon, to an Olympic surfer who has carved out a path for women, to the fight to protect the waters of the Galapagos Islands, Ceibo explores some of the most important struggles of our time. Along the way, Pacha untangles her own evolving identity as she reconnects with her Ecuadorian roots and embraces what it means to be Ecuadorian.
As plastic replaces precious marine life in our oceans, and as our demand for new technology escalates and our dependence on fossil fuels continues, rivers are poisoned and communities destroyed, this beautiful and poignant film asks: “What is the cost of our consumption?” Showcasing the beauty and fragility of the Amazon as well as the rich surf and wildlife, this intimate, visual treat is not to be missed.
Ceibo is screening Thursday 6th November at 6.45 >> Tickets available HERE
Thursday Night Pass is available
HERE
We caught up with Maddie to find out more about how the film came to life.
This isn’t the first project you’ve worked with Lucy on. How did you both meet?
MM: We very millennialy met on instagram, Lucy slid into my dms asking me to come onboard with her initial ideas for what ended up being ‘Yama’ our first film together. We met for the first time in the airport in Ghana, had a quick lunch to get to know each other and started filming about an hour later. I admire many things about Luc but her passion for storytelling, her resilience and her curiosity are a few that stand out to me.
How did Ceibo come about?
MM: So Luc and Pacha knew each other already, I knew of Pacha and always liked what she was doing. She came to see Yama and I think, sort of as a joke said ‘make a film about my story’ and we were like haha but seriously yes. I knew after Yama I wanted our next film to be centred around environmentalism as it’s a topic I feel strongly about and think should be at the forefront in pretty much all my storytelling now and so Ecuador with it’s incredible history of protest, rights for nature and indigenous resistance – plus Pacha’s personal journey just felt like such a perfect fit. I think the story evolved a lot, we had this idea of visiting the different regions and showing just how varied the landscape is and then the brilliant women we worked with ended up bringing so much to the table in terms of storyline and themes for their sections that it morphed and changed a lot.
Documentary filmmaking in the current climate is a challenge – what were the biggest challenges and what were the biggest rewards?
MM: I think getting budget is always one of the biggest challenges, we contacted hundreds of brands and ended up having about 10 or so sponsors and that side of it, just trying to convince people to trust in your idea and financially back it is exhausting, but so worth it when it comes through and you’re on. Yeah we landed our headline sponsor honestly about a month before we’d hoped to go, we really were about to postpone the whole project as we’d raised nothing after 4 months of planning and then all of a sudden we knew it was going ahead and then sponsors trickled in from that point. There are so many rewards from the process but I think actually going out there and filming was such a gift. Everyone we worked with was so kind and so open with us, we had so much, had such an adventure and got to experience things I honestly couldn’t have dreamed up, we learnt invaluable lessons and yeah it was so special. I remember I had such a surreal moment near the end of the trip – we were white water rafting, in the pouring rain down the Napo river in the Amazon with a kayak full of Elizabeth and her cousins – all these beautiful and hilarious Kichwa women and I just thought like ‘how did we get here, how am I here?’ I’ll never forget it.
What impact are you hoping Ceibo will have?
MM: After we created Yama an overwhelming experience was just how much people wanted to help and support the community it was centred around and so for Ceibo we knew we needed impact partners in place so people knew exactly how they could help, but also we wanted to create forms of fundraising through a percentage of all ticket sales going to our partners – also we held a raffle after our Aus and UK tours. We partner with the brilliant Wichana Foundation, Mingas Por el Mar, The Outlaw Ocean Project and with Elizabeth directly (who runs educational campouts for kids on the Napo plus runs a Kichwa Ecology Centre/field school with her parents). I guess the legacy of the film and the lessons I learnt from it are that activism doesn’t look the same for all. When you’re looking to make change you have to be so resilient and so make activism work for you and you’ll be so much more effective with it – whether it’s storytelling, marching, law making or teaching – do it from a place of passion and you’ll have so much more longevity and so much more to give.
