Aotearoa’s Fracking Capital: New Short Film by AUT Alumni Goes on the Ground in Taranaki to Decipher Our Climate Emergency By Justin Hu (he/him) In 2018, in response to the growing climate crisis, the then-newly elected Labour-led government banned oil and gas exploration – but with one key exception: Taranaki. The province has long been the capital of New Zealand’s oil and gas exploration, yet permits continue to be granted for onshore exploration in the region, despite the government also declaring a climate emergency last year. For that reason, it’s exactly where activist-filmmaker and AUT alumni Ethan Alderson-Hughes has gone to capture the reality behind Aotearoa’s declaration of a climate emergency. A Fracking Tour of Taranaki is the filmmaker’s newest project that exhibits the extent of the area’s continued onshore exploration and efforts of local environmental activists. Graduating from AUT in 2017, Alderson-Hughes studied a Bachelor of Communications, majoring in Television and Screen Production. His past films include Kaitiaki, which was an observational look at the Ihumātao protest and land occupation in 2019. In an interview with Debate, he says the spark for his latest film came from a chance encounter with a former lecturer.
“An ex-lecturer of mine, Thomas Owen – we met up after the first lockdown and had a big catch up. He was telling me about this tour that he did several years back of the well sites in Taranaki and I just thought that was really interesting. “I was particularly ignorant about it as well, like I had no idea that Taranaki was essentially the capital of oil and gas production in this country,” he said.
After becoming curious about the topic, the filmmaker says he reached out to Sarah Roberts, spokesperson for Taranaki Energy Watch, a grassroots advocacy group that is running tours in the region. “Her breadth of knowledge on the topic and her real fiery energy around fighting the industry was something that attracted me to the project.
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