Shot on a 16mm Bolex camera by film-maker Benjamin Wigley, who also captured the sound separately and recorded most of it on the hoof, this is an earnest but sincere hour-long film documenting a walk by climate activists from London to Glasgow in 2021. Organised by Extinction Rebellion Faith Bridge, the walk starts in Parliament Square and ends weeks later in Scotland, in time to coincide with the staging of Cop26, the UN climate change conference.
Organised by Christian clerical types – but inviting people of all faiths as well as those with no faith – there’s a strong spiritual vibe to the discourse Wigley captures on tape. That goes with the way the walkers sometimes describe themselves as “caministas”, like those who walk the ancient pilgrimage route Camino de Santiago across northern Spain. Even Wigley’s choice to film mostly on scruffy black-and-white stock adds an old-timey feel, which goes with the much-discussed notions of the future and heritage – as if this were a series of pictures generations hence will study, wearing their gas masks or in their protective bunkers, when the planet’s fate is sealed.
