VANESSA ANNAND
The Martlet (University of Victoria)

VICTORIA (CUP) — If you saw a horseman decked out in his finest apocalyptic duds in your hometown, what would you do? Give the Book of Revelations a close reading, perhaps. If you’ve paid any attention to the proposed pipeline projects that have divided this country for months (Keystone, Northern Gateway) and you’re wondering what lies ahead, what should you do? Watch The Pipe at the Victoria Film Festival (VFF).

No film at the VFF will resonate so soundly with the collective coastal consciousness as this documentary about Shell’s controversial Corrib Gas Pipeline in Ireland. In 2004, Shell started building a pipeline from a sub-sea natural gas reserve through Broadhaven Bay. The pipe was meant to cross over land and through the village of Rossport to an on-shore processing facility, but local resistance stalled its development. “Resistance” isn’t quite the word though — it could easily apply to a child who wraps his legs around his chair, refusing to leave the dinner table when asked. These people aren’t petulant. They’re willing to go on hunger strike, to prison, to court and out to the fields and the shore with their Border Collies to remind themselves why they’re fighting an energy monolith.

The film opens with sweeping helicopter shots of the landscape around Broadhaven Bay. These are juxtaposed with jolting, hand-held camera shots of protesting Rossport villagers being roughed up by police. We’ve seen these images before — hundreds of times in sundry documentaries. What we haven’t seen is old, toothless farmers digging for crabs in their gumboots, telling us what will get to you in the end is the sadness.

We’ve seen images of fishermen on their boats with peeling paint before, too. But we haven’t seen their crates full of crabs used as a metaphor for humans’ ruthlessness towards one another. The fishermen clip the muscles in the crabs’ claws so that the crustaceans won’t kill each other when in close quarters. Who will clip the far-reaching pincers of Shell that are choking the community? Certainly not the government, which allows the company onto farmers’ land and permits the pipeline to proceed apace without consultation. Certainly not the police, the reflective vest-clad Garda who beat protesters and board fishermen’s vessels.

It’s the age of the protesting villagers that is most affecting. These aren’t dissatisfied youths (though there are a few young faces in the sign-bearing crowds). These are men gone soft round the middle and women with drawn faces and cable-knit sweaters. These are people who, during the winter, stand with their signs but still take a moment to straighten their husbands’ collars or cup their wives’ faces. These small, warm gestures, more than the shrieking at town hall meetings or at protests, are the moments you will realize that everything — from the smallest hand-squeeze to the largest farm in the county — is at stake.

The only question that remains is how long it will take us to rouse ourselves to a similar state of ire and action. It’s called The Pipe, singular, but you will leave thinking of The Pipes, plural.

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Photo: Supplied