Fera Action Manifesto

Algorithms conform audio visual creativity into “content pipelines”. Artificial intelligence threatens to mechanise human generation. Both are being embraced by a production industry with a crushing carbon footprint. We must act now. Screen directors are the authors of audio visual works. We urgently need to resist being turned into shot-gatherers and stop both our cultural and planetary ecosystems becoming empty and uninhabitable. We must restore and nourish the intimate human connection between screen storytellers, our audience and the living world we share. We must champion such personal, organic film-making. Our ACTION! manifesto bakes cultural and ecological sustainability into the DNA of audiovisual stories from the first moment inspiration twinkles in the eyes of their creators. Inspired by the radical incitement to directors’ creativity of Dogme 95, and the Slow Food movement’s promotion of local, organic production, working screen directors on the FERA executive committee have drawn up deliberately provocative Principles of Sustainability – challenges for directors designed to positively simulate creativity and cultural diversity while reducing carbon emissions. This increased creativity will not only deliver a better, more organic experience of connection for our audiences at the point of sale – during those minutes they pay to watch – it will simultaneously offer the more deferred, less tangible reward of a sustainable future for our species. Currently maximum “greening” effort is first applied during audio visual production - too late for stories that only then begin to consider the tonnes of CO2 they’ve already committed to release into our atmosphere in their telling. The ACTION! manifesto goes upstream: from the dawn of script development screen directors will conceive and deliver diverse audiovisual stories that can be told with minimal environmental impact. FERA will promote the Principles of Sustainability and the ethos that informs them to the 20,000 active screen directors we represent in 35 European countries . In collaboration with established audiovisual “greening” specialists, we will provide detailed guidance for our screen directors to become Eco-Leaders.