With many thanks to everyone who I discussed this piece with in putting it together. 

Filmmakers, Andrew Forrest has arrived – we need to talk about the ethics of his new film fund.

This conversation can never start from a position of absolute moral purity – particularly on this continent where so much wealth is derived from invasion and extraction. I’m not commentating without having made compromises myself; I’ve consulted on projects funded by fossil fuel money and others backed by profits from the pharmaceutical sector. If perfection were a prerequisite for taking a political position none of us could move. The very fact that the resource sector’s money is everywhere – in our cancer institutes, across the arts, backing our sporting teams and building our public institutions – demonstrates the stronghold these companies have and the ways in which they are working to safeguard their social license.

Now a new player is entering the film space and we need to think deeply about what this means for us.

Andrew Forrest is the second richest person in Australia (after Gina Rinehart). His net worth is around $27 billion dollars. He just bought himself an island for $42 million. Now his philanthropic Minderoo Foundation wants to support social impact films. We need to examine this fund – its agendas, potential influences and where the wealth comes from.

Forrest’s track record is public and concerning. From his concerted attempts to divide communities to undermine the native title of the Yindjibarndi people to further his Fortescue Mineral Group’s pursuit of iron ore, to his backing of the cashless welfare card the list of Forrest’s controversies is long. This month he is in the news for pushing back on national laws to protect Indigenous cultural heritage.

This conversation is necessary. We need to reflect on what such a powerful funder means for filmmakers, particularly for those of us that strive to expose injustice and contribute to making impact with our films.

According to Forrest, Minderoo’s new film fund’s purpose is to ‘motivate people, companies and governments to act … reassess their behaviours or start a movement‘.

With Forrest’s immense wealth behind them and an initial budget of at least $10 million, this foundation has the capacity to powerfully shape the funding and content landscape for filmmaking in Australia and around the world. But what do they mean when they talk about social impact films?

Impact Producing is a relatively new term, coined by Doc Society (formerly BRITDOC) in 2011. In the past ten years, the social impact film sector has exploded in terms of content produced, definitions of terms, understanding of best practice, industry credibility and investment in this kind of film work. Good Pitch Australia really put the practice on the map locally, brokering considerable philanthropic funding and backing films such as Frackman, The Hunting Ground and That Sugar Film. The core aspirations of this kind of film work are to make transformative change, using the medium of film to promote and enact social justice. In a short space of time, impact filmmakers have worked intensely to define the terms of our practice and set the standards for the work we do.

The work of social justice films can be highly impactful. The need for more funding is clear.

But what happens to the sector when a highly influential new funder rides into town? What kind of films will Minderoo Foundation fund? Would they fund a climate change documentary whose social impact strategy campaigned for a mining tax, billionaire wealth cap or land rights? Are they even qualified to speak about impact?

Understanding and doing the work of impact is complex. Definitions of social change and social justice are always contested. Corporate and neoliberal influence often pushes us to measure success through limited lenses; bums on seats and social media conversions are easier to measure than behavioural and cultural change.

Despite deeper conversations around filmmaking ethics, culturally safe practices and questions regarding representation and power finally getting more attention there is a long way to go to achieving justice in the filmmaking space. The thinking around social impact in film is still very young. This work is fragile and often slow, requiring critical conversations about power and control. It is hard to see how Forrest’s foundation is equipped for this kind of work and it is worrying to think about them erasing or simplifying the important work that is happening to develop best practice in the social impact film practice.

When learning of the film fund Michael Woodley, CEO of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC), who has stood up to FMG over many years said the Minderoo Foundation ‘has no moral standing in relation to social impact’. (The thirteen-year battle Woodley led against Forrest is detailed in Paul Cleary’s new book Title Fight – not sure we’ll see a Minderoo-backed adaptation of that social impact story anytime soon).

Minderoo’s arrival on the scene is a big financial deal, which is probably why it has been met with only favourable media so far. The $10M they are proposing to invest initially is almost as much as the lead government film agency Screen Australia invests in documentaries each year. For context; Screen West invested just over $3M in documentary production in 2019/2020, Screen Australia invested just under $13.5M on documentary in 2020/21 while Good Pitch Australia raised some $12M from numerous funders for 18 films over three years.

The $10M they are proposing to invest initially is almost as much as the lead government film agency Screen Australia invests in documentaries each year.

Of course, there is not enough money to do this work well. Nor may there be any funding source that is absolutely clean or free of compromise (however there must be lines that we draw somewhere – would we take money from tobacco companies, weapons manufacturers or Adani?) The lack of resources to do our work and the messiness of funding ethics shouldn’t mean we let the announcement of this new film funding pass without critique – in fact these sticky questions should propel us to engage more deeply with these dilemmas.

There are profound social and ethical questions around the wealth that Forrest has generated and how. He should consider paying reparations to the communities from which he has extracted his wealth before he starts trying to shape policy through philanthropy. Or perhaps Andrew Forrest’s companies could just pay their taxes. That would be a more democratic distribution of Forrest’s wealth, rather than vesting decision making about philanthropic beneficiaries in a select few appointed by Forrest.

Sponsorship of arts and culture by large corporations, particularly those in the fossil fuels and resource sector, has been described as ‘artwash’ by British writer Mel Evans. Artwashing is the process by which large companies clean up their dirty image through a public-relations approach mediated by cultural philanthropy. This brings us to the question of social license. Making a documentary film can be a long hard slog. Do filmmakers, especially those working for social justice, really want to do all the hard work and then and badge that work with a company with such a tarnished track record? How can we make impact films with integrity if they are backed by money derived from problematic sources?

Finally, there is the question of influence: of which films get made and how Minderoo’s work may shape the social impact sector itself, in terms of how ideas of social change are upheld and discussed. Films that are funded by Minderoo will be more likely to get funding and tax offsets via the government film agencies than those without an investor on board. Such a big player can have significant influence on what kinds of films get made and on where public funding goes. Of further concern is the fact that Minderoo have made it clear they will take an active editorial role in the films it funds.

In an already strained funding environment, the risk of the weight and influence of a large corporate player is too great to ignore. Private sector money isn’t subject to an arms-length peer review process. It is money with its own agenda, and Forrest’s track record indicates that this agenda could put the entire social impact film sector’s credibility at risk.

As filmmakers, directors, producers and curators we should be deeply concerned about the impact this kind of funding could have on our industry.

We need to do more than just talk about it. We should refuse to accept Forrest’s money.

In her book Arts Wash: Big Oil and the Arts, British writer and Liberate Tate organiser Mel Evans defines artwashing as the process by which large oil companies clean up their dirty image through a public-relations approach mediated by cultural philanthropy. Artwashing is an extension of the notion of greenwashing, where companies feign green credentials to build credibility for their brand and generate social capital. Evans asks:

How is it that there is a gap between all these harmful impacts that oil companies like BP have through their daily activities around the world and our acceptance of them as part of our lives? A big part of what happens in that gap is artwash – the way in which oil companies project a better image of themselves to the public through their associations with cultural institutions and sport and their social license to operate.

Artists and the arts sector need to take a hard look at the kind of social license we are granting the fossil fuel industry and weigh that up with our contract with the audiences and communities we serve.

There are significant parallels here to the ways in which tobacco advertising was once commonplace and is now seen as unacceptable. Activists, doctors and campaigners worked to ensure stricter controls of tobacco advertising as the public health impacts became clear. The health impacts of the climate emergency are vast and are set to impact everyone on the planet—far beyond the damage tobacco has caused—so of course the same advertising standards should apply to fossil fuel companies.

In their 2019 project Maps of Gratitude, Cones of Silence and Lumps of Coal, arts collective The Centre for Everything mapped the web of relationships between the fossil fuel sector and the arts in so-called Australia. The web is so busy that the diagram the artists created to map the links between organisations, boards, directors, festivals and funding has little blank space and is a mass of lines, nodes and connections.

As she walks us through the map in the video that accompanies the project, Gabrielle de Vietri—who is now the Mayor of the City of Yarra—asks:

What about the impact on the arts? It’s not just about money. These associations to people and brands inform the culture of our institutions. From the way the workplace operates to which artists are supported. They can influence who tells a story and influence our shared culture. Are we still willing to accept their money and their governance and in exchange grant them, the fossil fuels industry, their social license to operate?

Darwin Festival, one of the largest festivals in the Northern Territory (NT), takes place in the tropical dry season. It hosts some incredible work from First Nations artists from across the Territory and opens with a free concert featuring First Nations artists from across the continent, an event which is sponsored by oil and gas producer, Santos. 51 per cent of the land of the Territory is under active exploration licenses for gas fracking; Santos is a major permit holder and one of the most advanced in these explorations.

The relationship between Darwin Festival and Santos is emblematic of art-washing in the Australian arts context, and is particularly devastating in a First Nations cultural context. As well as accruing social capital, the Santos money silences communities by putting First Nations artists in a position where they have to choose between backing campaigns in their communities opposed to fracking and staying quiet to take up the opportunity to perform in the largest creative showcase in the Territory.

The forced relationship between First Nations artists and the fossil fuel sector brokered by the festival is particularly exploitative when so many historical and contemporary examples of fossil fuel extraction occur on First Nations lands and in proximity to communities, deeply impacting traditional culture and dividing communities over its impacts, risks and limited monetary reward.

There has been a consistent campaign by Territory artists, audiences and arts sector organisations since 2015—when the first open letter was published—calling on Darwin Festival to break ties with gas companies. The campaign has included securing commitments to replace fossil fuel producers with ethical sources of philanthropic funding to ensure that artists and audiences don’t miss out if fossil fuel ties are cut. So far, Festival organisers and their corporate and government backers have yet to respond to these offers, and have even increased fossil fuel sponsorship in recent years bringing Japanese oil and gas company Inpex into the mix.

Further south, in Western Australia, climate activists had a victory earlier this year, when they managed to get the Perth Fringe to terminate its sponsorship by Woodside Petroleum. The campaign lobbied for the event to break ties with the company, and in June they celebrated when it was announced that Woodside would no longer have naming rights. Barely a few weeks passed before Woodside and Artrage, the event’s producer, announced a new philanthropic partnership.

The Western Australia arts and cultural sector are inextricably linked with the extractive industries. The Guardian reports that there ’it is impossible for arts companies to completely wean themselves off sponsorship from the fossil fuels sector.’ Author Mark Naglazas continues:

Woodside is also a sponsor of Barking Gecko Theatre, Yirra Yaakin, the WA Symphony Orchestra and WA Ballet. Fortescue Metals Group supports Black Swan Theatre Company; BHP is the principal partner of Awesome Arts; Chevron has the naming rights for Perth festival’s music strand (also targeted by activists); Tianqi Lithium is the naming sponsors of a gallery of the new WA museum Boola Bardip; and Rio Tinto is the premium partner of CinefestOZ.

The underlying value of these sponsorships is that they ‘offset’ the low levels of tax paid by fossil fuel companies compared to their profit base. In truth, if they did pay adequate taxes, there would be significantly more money available to governments to support the arts—and health, and education. These companies are not being altruistic: they are paying a minimal amount of money in sponsorships (in terms of their wealth) whilst casting themselves as good, corporate citizens and building a culture of dependency and silence around a polluting and culturally destructive industry.

So, what can artists do when we are so squeezed financially and struggling to survive the conditions created by Covid-19, particularly ongoing cancellations of our work?

A practical way to reject fossil fuel funding has been developed by Groundwater Arts, a US citizen-artist collaborative. They propose a clause that artists can insert in their contracts to reject funding derived from the extractive industries. It reads in part:

Client/Employer [should define ‘Client’ and ‘Employer’ in the contract] hereby represents and warrants that: (i) it has not heretofore knowingly and willingly received funds or donation from fossil fuel industries.

Artists can advocate for the inclusion of similar clauses in Australia’s workplace agreements developed by our peak arts organisations such as NAVA, Theatre Network Australia, APAM and MEAA. Festivals, arts organisations and artists can actively engage in securing relationships with funders investing in climate action and climate justice whilst simultaneously and publicly withdrawing their support—and their hard-won social capital—from the art-washing initiatives of the extractive capitalist industry. We live in a time in which there is no alternative.

In concluding the Maps of Gratitude film, Gabrielle de Vietri sums it up best:

The social context of our arts must become more authentically connected to our ethics. To the tides of public sentiment. To the urgency of our times. We must interrupt the cultural soliloquy of big business and replace it with the urgent and overwhelming public outcry demanding climate justice.

Image: a detail from Maps of Gratitude