Filmmaker Q&A with ‘My Mercury’ Co-director Joëlle Chesselet
What inspired this story?
I was inspired by my brother Yves, the main human protagonist of this eco-psychological tale, a true warrior of the Anthropocene who had to make difficult moral decisions alone in the face of devastating threats to the survival of the unseen seabirds of the South Atlantic. But I was equally inspired by Mercury as a compelling character in itself, and by the metaphoric crucible that islands provide to reveal complex aspects of the human condition.
Describe some of the challenges faced while making this film/program
Mercury Island is extremely remote, and the surrounding sea and desert are serious obstacles to getting there, not to mention the red tape. I have countless emails applying for permits, and once these were obtained, the swell and wind could still conspire to deny access, for years. Right until the post-production phase, I had very little funding, but I knew we had to get back to capture, in high definition, the unique geomorphology of that “Holy Mountain in the sea”- as my brother fondly called the island. Steering a drone deep into the cave at its core was a nail-biting exercise. Another challenge was to find an editor who unequivocally respected the video diaries on hi-8 shot by my brother. Jinx Godfrey and her team honored their authenticity, and we found ways to seamlessly blend Hi8, U-Matic, Betacam and Hi-res formats. My co-producer, George Chignell, had much on her plate managing an inter-continental team and the ‘duty of care’ that making a film about a member of my own family meant for me. Co-director Pippa Ehrlich, who joined the team late in the process, gracefully balanced my decades-long involvement in Yves’ story with a fresh objectivity.
How do you approach storytelling?
My approach to storytelling is informed by my desire not to simplify complex entanglements for an easy ride on the viewing couch. With ‘My Mercury’ I held onto my desire to weave Yves’ inner literary (diary) voice through the more objective conservation story, as well as the added layer of the often hilariously human dialogue between Yves and Vid, his video-recorder ‘cam-fidant’. When I was pitching to raise funds, many thought that would be too much for the audience. I feel story telling or documentary filmmaking is hampered by preemptive assumptions of what the audience can take and the bar is often too low, constraining the possibilities of the form. I try and see it as an audio and visual philosophy that expands the current affair by wresting emotion from the statistic to provide a deepened experience of context and consequence, bringing fractal realities into a universal empathetic space, hopefully restoring agency by in the process.
What impact do you hope this film/program will have?
My aim is to use this eco-psychological tale to raise awareness about the complexity and fragility of ecosystems. The film is timely as already ecologists and conservationists in Namibia and South Africa are sharing ‘My Mercury’ to various platforms to embolden their campaigns to highlight the dire plight of the seabirds of the South Atlantic , and for the first time, besides overfishing and climate change, contribution of seal predation and proliferation to the seabirds’ demise is being publicly acknowledged.