Antoinette Wilson - Living the Change director's exclusive interview

Wilson: We began shooting in 2016, right on the back of completing the one-year live-in project for our film A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity. That had been a very intense year living in Gippsland, Victoria (Australia) in a small community, exploring living with a 'one world footprint'. We came away from it feeling the need to hit the road and be free spirits for a bit! And very inspired to meet like-minded, solutions-focused people making positive change in their corner of the world. We headed to New Zealand, where Antoinette grew up, with a series of short documentaries in mind, called The Living the Change Series, and we began shooting and releasing 5- to 20-minute films on our YouTube channel. But as we travelled, we found we were also meeting people with awesome knowledge and ideas around whom we couldn't necessarily tell a short story but whose knowledge we really wanted to share. We ended up shooting 'talking head' interviews that we loved but weren't yet sure how we would use. In time the idea developed of interweaving our 'short story' docos with excerpts from these interviews in order to tie together knowledge about both the issues and the solutions. In this rather ad hoc way, Living the Change the feature film was born! We sought post-production funding in order to bring it all together in the editing suite and the result was a production of higher value than we'd been able to achieve for the short film series. Some of the footage from the film can still be found on our YouTube channel, differently edited and often more detailed than we had room to include in the feature film, which we love.

Wilson: I have to admit, my favourite part of the film every time is Greg and Lisa, compost toilet heroes from Wanaka, in the South Island ☺ They are highly knowledgeable and interesting on the important subject – admittedly not everyone's favourite – of why we shouldn't be mixing our nutrient dense human waste with beautiful clean drinking water. This section of the film manages to be both informative and very funny, if a little shocking to some. In theatres everyone cracks up at the end of this section – I love hearing that!

Wilson: We were amazed by the fact that every single person we contacted about participating in this film was eager to take part. At the time we didn't have a strong following on YouTube yet, with very few films uploaded, so not much to prove ourselves. Yet everyone loved the intention and the mission and jumped at the opportunity to be part of it. This was so pleasing to us and seemed to indicate the strong desire of people who are reconnecting with their food, their land, their systems to also be connected with their community, including strangers coming into it. This feels very important to us. Having said all that, a couple of our interviewees were old friends – Antoinette had once worked for the amazing Josje and Frank at Wairarapa Eco Farm and knew other interviewees from when she'd taken part in a permaculture design course years beforehand. These people were often the ones who guided us to other 'changemakers' around the country whom we might not otherwise have connected with because they didn't all have an online presence. All up, it was a pretty organic process!

Wilson: We've loved hearing the response to this film. Someone once asked how we would gauge its success and we said that success would be if, in a few years, people started writing to say, 'Hey I watched Living the Change and it inspired me to make a change in my life'. Well that's now begun happening – from an alternative currency founded in the States, to a landshare project begun in Victoria – and we couldn't be happier, or more motivated to keep making films like this. Here's a couple of our favourite messages from Living the Change audiences: 'God I love you guys! Thank you so much for sharing your passion with us. You are so massively effecting my vision for how I will live and participate in this world.' – Aaron 'Love your films. I now watch Living the Change almost every week. It is so addictive, in a good way :-) ' – Fernanda

Wilson: We’re planning to spend the next year focusing on releasing more short films on our YouTube channel, where we have over 100,000 subscribers, some of whom get a bit impatient if we’re silent for too long! While we absolutely love the experience of making feature films, we also really love the low-stress, low-budget short films that, because we can release them on a regular basis, ensure we stay connected with our audience. No matter their length though, our films will continue to tell solutions-focused stories about what Charles Eisenstein calls ‘the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.