View the film.
Be one of the first 40 people to RSVP by email will
be invited to see the film for free.
Email for free tickets- info@filmprojects.com.au
Other tickets are available through Fan Force:
https://www.fanforcetv.com/programs/bondi-cinema-club
Be one of the first 40 people to RSVP by email will
be invited to see the film for free.
Email for free tickets- info@filmprojects.com.au
Other tickets are available through Fan Force:
https://www.fanforcetv.com/programs/bondi-cinema-club
"Intimate and Profound" Journalist Kerry Brewster
"Beautifully poetic" Adrian Martin (Screen Hub)
"Radiant with love and full of desperate love" - Zoe Goodall (Rough Cut)
"Beautifully poetic" Adrian Martin (Screen Hub)
"Radiant with love and full of desperate love" - Zoe Goodall (Rough Cut)
Imogen Jones, AKA electro-pop singer Lupa J, who features in documentary The Weather Diaries.
In her feature documentary Sydney filmmaker Kathy Drayton (The Girl In the Mirror) asks what the
future holds for her teenage daughter amidst the existential threats we are facing in the 21st century.
Filmed over 6 years,The Weather Diaries, reaches its climax in 2020 as temperatures soar and bushfires rage.
future holds for her teenage daughter amidst the existential threats we are facing in the 21st century.
Filmed over 6 years,The Weather Diaries, reaches its climax in 2020 as temperatures soar and bushfires rage.
Join here for the free zoom Q&A
Bats in heatwave conditions in Parramatta
THE WEATHER DIARIES
When the young Imogen Jones first saw Princess Mononoke, the 1997 Japanese
Miyazaki anime film made about the same time she was born, her alignment with the wolf
girl was so profound that she dressed up as the character for years. Later she would name her electro-pop alter ego Lupa J, after the character.
“The fact that she was so fiercely passionate about the animals in the wilderness resonated with me”
Jones tells Guardian Australia. “She was the first female character that I’d seen that was wild.”
As Princess Mononoke is a guiding force for Imogen, Imogen herself becomes such a force for her mother’s poetic documentary,The Weather Diaries.
The focus of the film was originally on climate change and the fate of the flying foxes that were being evicted from Sydney’s Botanic Gardens. But Imogen, who attended the Conservatorium high
school, herself became the central character in a film that Drayton now describes as a 'meditation on her daughter’s future'.
Filmed over 6 years, The Weather Diaries follows Imogen from a 15-year-old violinist struggling to find her identity within the Con high school, to releasing her first album, and touring as support act to Sarah Blasko.
In parallel to Imogen’s story, Drayton films wildlife rescuers working with flying foxes, and researchers who testing Parramatta red gums under the conditions of a 3C hotter climate (as predicted by 2070). During the filming period, temperatures reach 47C and flying foxes start dying in the thousands. The final
scenes, shot in Dec 2019, show the devastation of last summer's bushfires.
As one of the researchers in the film comments: “Changes aren’t likely to
happen until people really start to hurt... By the time people are hurting, (he concedes) it’s too late.
Drayton reflects on the data in voiceover: “Perhaps we’ll be the first species to record its own extinction... “And that will be our most remarkable achievement.”
To find an audience film about climate change needed to offer grounds for optimism: following Imogen's story offered that, but as her career starts to take off, Imogen – who is now 21 – loses her own
sense of hope. There’s a sense of futility in creating anything against a backdrop of mass extinction:
“Why should I even try to have a future at all? she asks her mother. “What does it matter, if I die when I’m young?”
Drayton films her daughter close to tears and wondering – almost spookily, given the pandemic that was yet to come – if there would even be places that she could play her music if there was some kind of mass environmental catastrophe. She’s lost touch with that lone wolf girl she once cherished, she says. “I’m not able to be that strong.”
While perhaps older generations have watched and intellectualised the incremental deterioration of the environment, some of Jones’s generation is growing up with hopelessness ingrained in their psyche.
“When I was in high school, I didn’t really think any further beyond that, and I was just focused on the immediate things I had to do to succeed,” Jones tells Guardian Australia. “Then I started
to feel more jaded since finishing high school. That’s why I was so feeling so hopeless about everything after putting my album out.”
After global public interest in Extinction Rebellion and the school strike movement, Jones says that many people, upon seeing The Weather Diaries, make the assumption that she is more of an activist than she is.
“It’s interesting that people have gotten that from the film, because I think more than anything my mum was trying to show that people my age are so focused on their own lives that it’s hard to think about the future and climate change,” she says. “It’s sad to realise that, but it’s not like I have any activist friends
either. We’re leftist and we understand the reality of what’s happening, but it’s hard to know what to do. I think my generation is just inherently nihilistic. That’s the way that it’s affecting us.”
The Guardian
Jenny Valentish June 2020
When the young Imogen Jones first saw Princess Mononoke, the 1997 Japanese
Miyazaki anime film made about the same time she was born, her alignment with the wolf
girl was so profound that she dressed up as the character for years. Later she would name her electro-pop alter ego Lupa J, after the character.
“The fact that she was so fiercely passionate about the animals in the wilderness resonated with me”
Jones tells Guardian Australia. “She was the first female character that I’d seen that was wild.”
As Princess Mononoke is a guiding force for Imogen, Imogen herself becomes such a force for her mother’s poetic documentary,The Weather Diaries.
The focus of the film was originally on climate change and the fate of the flying foxes that were being evicted from Sydney’s Botanic Gardens. But Imogen, who attended the Conservatorium high
school, herself became the central character in a film that Drayton now describes as a 'meditation on her daughter’s future'.
Filmed over 6 years, The Weather Diaries follows Imogen from a 15-year-old violinist struggling to find her identity within the Con high school, to releasing her first album, and touring as support act to Sarah Blasko.
In parallel to Imogen’s story, Drayton films wildlife rescuers working with flying foxes, and researchers who testing Parramatta red gums under the conditions of a 3C hotter climate (as predicted by 2070). During the filming period, temperatures reach 47C and flying foxes start dying in the thousands. The final
scenes, shot in Dec 2019, show the devastation of last summer's bushfires.
As one of the researchers in the film comments: “Changes aren’t likely to
happen until people really start to hurt... By the time people are hurting, (he concedes) it’s too late.
Drayton reflects on the data in voiceover: “Perhaps we’ll be the first species to record its own extinction... “And that will be our most remarkable achievement.”
To find an audience film about climate change needed to offer grounds for optimism: following Imogen's story offered that, but as her career starts to take off, Imogen – who is now 21 – loses her own
sense of hope. There’s a sense of futility in creating anything against a backdrop of mass extinction:
“Why should I even try to have a future at all? she asks her mother. “What does it matter, if I die when I’m young?”
Drayton films her daughter close to tears and wondering – almost spookily, given the pandemic that was yet to come – if there would even be places that she could play her music if there was some kind of mass environmental catastrophe. She’s lost touch with that lone wolf girl she once cherished, she says. “I’m not able to be that strong.”
While perhaps older generations have watched and intellectualised the incremental deterioration of the environment, some of Jones’s generation is growing up with hopelessness ingrained in their psyche.
“When I was in high school, I didn’t really think any further beyond that, and I was just focused on the immediate things I had to do to succeed,” Jones tells Guardian Australia. “Then I started
to feel more jaded since finishing high school. That’s why I was so feeling so hopeless about everything after putting my album out.”
After global public interest in Extinction Rebellion and the school strike movement, Jones says that many people, upon seeing The Weather Diaries, make the assumption that she is more of an activist than she is.
“It’s interesting that people have gotten that from the film, because I think more than anything my mum was trying to show that people my age are so focused on their own lives that it’s hard to think about the future and climate change,” she says. “It’s sad to realise that, but it’s not like I have any activist friends
either. We’re leftist and we understand the reality of what’s happening, but it’s hard to know what to do. I think my generation is just inherently nihilistic. That’s the way that it’s affecting us.”
The Guardian
Jenny Valentish June 2020