SEEDS OF CHANGE Damon Gameau’s 2040 and Sustainable Futures
The 2019 documentary 2040 takes a small-scale situation (the lives of writer/director Damon Gameau’s immediate family) and pairs it with a big idea (climate change) to create a unique blend of pedagogy and personalisation. The film starts and ends with present-day scenes of Gameau with his wife, Zoë, and their young daughter, Velvet, planting trees. Gameau frames the film around the concept of approaching the future through his daughter’s eyes: he wants to explore what life will be like for her in adulthood. Acknowledging today’s often gloomy, dystopian visions of the future, especially from an environmental perspective, he comments that we are ‘renting the Earth from our children’ and admits that he feels he owes it to Velvet to explore more sustainable possibilities. 2040’s tagline – ‘Join the Regeneration’ – is a clever play on words, with ‘regeneration’ referring both to environmental reparation and to his daughter’s emerging generation as facilitators of change.
2040 introduces the effects of climate change through a unique framing device: Gameau taking us into his family home. This is also where the film’s unique visual style first comes into play. Special effects are employed as Gameau walks us through the effects of climate change with reference to the everyday objects in his home: water pours from his freezer as he describes the planet’s ice
