Groundswell

Deep concern fuels a film that is nevertheless a bit of a hard slog at times.

Back in 2010 Josh Fox made a documentary entitled Gasland. It was not a perfect film (at 108 minutes it felt over-extended) but it was enormously forceful as a warning against the dangers of fracking. The threat to health was clearly revealed but the film also showed how the big companies seeking to utilise gas lying under American soil were playing down those risks and getting away with it. At the time when Gasland appeared fracking became an issue much in the news. The matter was never resolved, however, and as the decade went on other stories took over the headlines and less and less was heard about fracking. But in truth the subject is one that we neglect at our peril for the case against it, while still involving matters of health and the loss of farming land, now more than ever includes another factor, the impact of fracking on climate change.

In this context one welcomes Johnny Gogan's Groundswell, a documentary made over the past ten years which passionately supports the anti-fracking brigade. Gogan is Irish and he puts at the centre of his film the efforts of locals in Leitrim and across the border in Fermanagh to tackle the threat arising from the licence given to Tamboran Resources, an Australian company, to explore that area for shale gas on a huge scale. The film is a reminder of the amount of work needed by such people to make headway and to challenge government attitudes, but it also serves as a wake-up call to those who, less directly affected so far, have let the issue fade from their minds (in more recent times Donald Trump's enthusiasm for selling and exporting gas fracked in America to other countries has underlined how relevant this subject remains).

While feeling hugely supportive of the aims behind Groundswell, I have to say that I felt that Gogan's attempt to find an effective shape for the material shot over a decade fell short and to a marked extent. The film is stuffed with talking heads often in brief appearances but with the result that different aspects and different attitudes are touched on so that it quickly becomes confusing rather than straightforward and easy to follow. Despite Ireland being the chief setting, we also get the sudden insertion of footage from Pennsylvania, New York and Washington and that disturbs the film's flow - but even the material from Leitrim often lacks that flow. A key group against fracking goes under the name 'Love Leitrim' and perhaps a stronger emphasis on its creation and subsequent history would have helped to give shape to a film that all too often becomes a work of bits and pieces offering this angle and then that. There is even at one point a sudden distracting switch to animation which might have been better left to the end since it accompanies an effective song especially composed for the film by Steve Wickham and this sequence could have worked well as a summation just before the end credits. The lack of any sustained flow can make the film feel like hard work but the importance of its message will be what really counts for most viewers.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Featuring  Nuala McNulty, Eddie Mitchell, Sandra Steingraber, Brian Leyden, Aedín McLouglin, Kate Ruddock, Clare Daly, Michael Colreavy, Scott Coombs, Jamie Murphy, Dianne Little, Mark Ruffalo.

Dir Johnny Gogan, Pro Johnny Gogan, Screenplay Johnny Gogan, Ph Niall Flynn and Johnny Gogan, Ed Patrick O'Rourke, Music Steve Wickham, Animation Ivano A. Antonazzo.

Bandit Films @ 30/Studio North West TV-Jonny Tull.
80 mins. Ireland. 2021. Rel: 16 April 2021. Available on Modern Films. No Cert.