DIRECT ACTION

Boulder filmmakers behind ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ talk heist movies and climate activism

BY NATHANIEL KENNON PERKINS

As the human toll of global climate change comes into clearer view, attempts to find political or market solutions frustrate many environmentalists who call for a more immediate response. This is the driving force behind How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a new film about a group of activists who commit to a far more explosive form of direct action.

For Boulder-native filmmaking duo Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei, the realities of this struggle are deeply ingrained in who they are as people and artists. Director and co-writer Goldhaber came from a household in which both of his parents were climate scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“I grew up with what I call ‘the doom of climate apocalypse’ hanging over me,” he says. “Climate change has kind of touched every person on planet Earth at this point, and we need to pivot the conversation away from awareness and toward how we are going to stop this.”

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an adaptation of Andreas Malm’s nonfiction book of the same title, published by Verso Books in 2021. Malm’s work critiques passivity and pacifism within activist circles as well as the “climate fatalism” adopted by people outside the movement who see the problem as incomprehensibly big, complicated and unstoppable.

The movie, which premiered last September at the Toronto International Film Festival and made its local debut with an April 4 preview screening at Century Boulder, combines the arguments and ideas of Malm’s treatise with the conventions and excitement of a heist film.

“The heist movie is a political genre. It’s always been a genre about inequality,” says Goldhaber. “But the heist movie is also great because it’s about a team coming together when all of them are necessary to do the job.”

But while the crew of a standard heist movie is most often motivated by the allure of a momentous payday, the ensemble of characters in How to Blow Up a Pipeline find themselves uncomfortably connected in a bold scheme to halt the flow of oil through a part of rural West Texas.

Although there is no shortage of action and suspense, the film is heavily character driven. By jumping back and forth through time, each person’s tale of hardship and frustration is explored, illuminating how the crew ultimately found one another despite divergent life experiences and opposing positions on the political spectrum.

For Producer Mazzei, this cinematic device reflects the real-world importance of people of different backgrounds and ideologies uniting to address the problems that confront all of us.

“Each character has a different viewpoint,” she says. “They’re brought together by one issue, but they all come from different places.”

Climate Apocalypse Now

But the movie’s ultimate goal is not advocacy for the sabotage of fossil fuel infrastructure. Instead, How to Blow Up a Pipeline aims to contribute to the discourse surrounding the gaps between ideology and action in the face of the climate crisis.

“In our hometown, we’re watching climate change destroy the homes of people we know and love,” says Mazzei, referring to the Marshall Fire of December 2021, estimated to have burned more than 1,000 structures and to have caused over $2 billion in damages.

“Boulder has always been about supporting the environment, but it’s clear that whatever we’re doing is not working, and it’s starting to harm our community in very visible and tragic ways,” Mazzei continues. “This film is hopefully the start of a conversation about what else we can do.”

But the ideas that are so inspiring to Mazzei and Goldhaber also bring their share of controversy. After the release of Malm’s book, critics on the political right attacked his thesis, calling it an extremist stance. But Goldhaber isn’t worried about this kind of pushback.

“Any time anyone makes a piece of media today, there’s going to be some kind of bad-faith criticism, and you can’t really worry too much about that,” he says.

To Goldhaber and the rest of the team behind How to Blow Up a Pipeline, there are more important things to focus on.

“What we’re staring at is climate apocalypse,” he says. “What kind of tactics are necessary and defensible to prevent one?”

April 7-15, 2023

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