Latest / TIPS Podcast / Visual Storytelling with Indrani Pal-Chaudri: Civil Society on Industrial Policy and Green Structural Transformation

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Visual Storytelling with Indrani Pal-Chaudri: Civil Society on Industrial Policy and Green Structural Transformation · TIPS Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello again.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is Tobanike on another Tips podcast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are at the Global Convening Conference that is looking at reclaiming industrial policy for the people, how civil society's role in green structural transformation can be applied.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, we look at the topic of storytelling and how the imagination can shape and in itself is shaped by society.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Trade and industrial policy strategies has acknowledged the arts and craft sector as part of South Africa's broader cultural and creative industries, particularly within industrial policy frameworks like the Industrial Policy Action Plan IPAP.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: In its work supporting inclusive industrialization and economic transformation, TIPS has recognized art and craft as a potential driver of employment, skills, development, and localized production, especially in rural and township economies.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Film and television were identified in IPAP as priority industries because of their strong linkages to services, tourism, technology, soft power, and cultural exports.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Find more readings on the TIPS website in relation to the creative economy.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Without further ado, let's go to the podcast.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Can you please tell our listeners who you are, where you're from, and what do you do?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so happy to be here with you.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Indrani Palchodri.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm from India, from Calcutta.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: I live in the US and Canada, and I'm a filmmaker, a futurist, and a founder.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm a visiting lecturer at Princeton University, where I teach a class on mobilizing movements with art and film for human rights and social change.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also the founder of Open Origin, which is green energy and green power for data centers for AI, and green ammonia we create for decarbonizing the shipping industry.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's interesting.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been doing that?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Open Origin has been for five years.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we're now just uh our projects are being funded, and we have a big project in India, we have a project in the Middle East and in the US.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: As a filmmaker, I've been a filmmaker for since I was 14, and I was discovered by David Bowie when I was 19 and a student at Princeton.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a kind of a full circle there.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: But as a founder of Shakti Regeneration Institute and the Regeneration Generation Coalition, that's been the last five years.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've really focused on Indigenous-led systems change and collaboration with science, technology, and business.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think business informs industrial policy?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell Business is an essential part of industrial policy, especially in today's world, because uh countries are not uh making the investments that they used to in infrastructure.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So business is taking a very large role in that space.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh certainly invites uh that to change, but currently that seems to be the business is leading the way.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's very important that industrial policy recognizes the needs of businesses as well as the needs of the people, and of course the people has to come first.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: But understanding how businesses can work to fulfill those needs is a very important component.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us the inspiration behind two of some of your films and what were you trying to achieve with those films?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: The overarching theme of all of my work is transformation, and it's primarily transformation of consciousness, both for the individual watching and for society as a whole.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: So different films that I've done, different photography and writings and things that I've done, they all come together.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: They all share themes of really uh utilizing the time that we have on this planet to connect with others to make things better.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And especially in the last few years, my focus has really become on systemic change.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: I started out with a school in India that I founded when I was 18 and working in very narrow areas that we have felt a great calling to support.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I've run that school for 25 years, but now it's expanded into this much larger objective, which is to create systemic change, to not just be putting band-aids on the problems with uh, you know, working in a philanthropic model is very often uh a very narrow lens.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I've come to realize that as a creative person, as an artist, the most important work I can do is to help to create society the way that it could be, the way it should be, in my opinion.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, you help people to imagine.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I really believe that through imagination we can then co-create the world in much better ways than we can if we let our fear or let the status quo intimidate us into acceptance of things that are quite frankly unacceptable.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: In climate debates we hear a lot about green growth and green colonialism.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your films often highlight the power of collective voices, whether survivors, women, or young people.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think civil society and artists can challenge extractive and exploitative models of green development?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: That is very much the subject of my film, The Regeneration Generation.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's about shifting consciousness from extractive to resilient or regenerative approaches.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the lens that I use is a lens of multiplicity, uh, really looking at the world that we live in from an array of perspectives helps us to get away from our own biases and our own place-based experiences.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly an indigenous lens has really drawn drawn me, and I have uh since I was a young girl, I have had visions and dreams of really connecting more deeply with indigenous communities.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been very blessed to be invited to do just that.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been working closely with communities from the Amazon, from Acre, particularly the Puyanawa people for the last four years.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've been uh spending large amounts of time living with the community and with many other communities around the world in this process of understanding where we are now, what the possibilities are through a perspective that is deeply rooted in values and nature and what it really means to be human.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I believe that the conversations that we've had and the intersections between those varied indigenous perspectives and the perspectives of science, uh, innovation and business really can help co-create pathways to systemic change.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of when you make films, I'm just curious now.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is there an approach in your distribution of films that might be different maybe from say a Hollywood blockbuster?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like in as much as you are creating these films, there's an intention for awareness in the subjects that you are touching on.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So can you just speak on that in terms of how you distribute and maybe co-create dialogue?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let me take a step back.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: I started as a filmmaker from being a photographer and from working on many campaigns, shaping brands, working in marketing.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: My career was launched by David Bowie.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: He discovered some of my early work and he commissioned my first photo shoots, which were all sales tools.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: They were, you know, his album cover, a music video for him.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was my first directing of a large project.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so each of these are ostensibly a commercial vehicle.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: But uh the music video, for example, was Valentine's Day, which was about MASH school shooting, where he embodied a young man who was so disenfranchised that he shot all of his friends in this story.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I've really consciously used the tools of marketing, of you know, the commercializing process, but taken that for the subject matter that I cared the most about, and I've been working with the nonprofit on, and now with the for-profit as well.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so really aligning the tools of our commercial storytelling processes, but not doing it with the goal of commercial success, but rather of a transformative impact.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been very fortunate to be able to make that transition.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was quite difficult to do.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's required a lot of innovation in terms of how to finance the films, how to work with the press, uh, work with marketing to do my own distribution in in many cases, or find partners who can align with those processes.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's very different from the Hollywood model, where it's really about de-risking the storytelling by telling the same story over and over again, by sh showing it through a very white male lens, and really it's uh at least 90% a white male lens, less than 10% female, and less than 1% women of color in Hollywood.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So from the get-go, I'm I'm very different, but uh also I haven't been able to get the support of the Hollywood structures for this kind of storytelling as much as I would like.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Not yet, anyway.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so necessity has been the mother of invention, and it's been really great because I don't have a financier saying, Oh, but I want the ending to be like this, or you know, I let's uh it allows me to have real journalistic integrity and creative integrity to be able to follow the stories that I feel are most relevant.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Without being diluted by a voice of a sponsor.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: I do work with sponsors, and I'm very happy to collaborate, but I can choose who to work with based on our alignment of values and objectives.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel visual activism is effective?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I feel it's far more effective than pretty much any other form, but it doesn't get used very much.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I've done many, many campaigns.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've won a lot of awards, I've had over four billion impressions from these campaigns and films and various forms of storytelling.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the aggregate actually is quite large considering the rather limited resources with which uh these were done.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I've been very fortunate as well to be able to work with legendary artists uh with partners who are extremely visionary in their approaches, and so that's uh it's really it's all a collaboration, and as a filmmaker, you can't do anything on your own, really.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Through Open Origin and the Shakti Regeneration Institute, you're working on green technologies and community empowerment.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: How do you bridge creative storytelling with the practical climate solutions?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that the creative storytelling is actually a critical component.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: One of the main things that holds back the green transition is a lack of imagination or pathology of imagination, in fact, I would say.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Majority of storytelling, the majority of myth making of our times is fear-based.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when we look into the future, it's extremely rare to find a vision of the future that is in any way positive.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And when they are positive, there's usually some terrible caveat just waiting to jump out, you know.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Really, only Star Trek is kind of the only successful vision of the future that uh people have been able to get behind.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result, I believe that's why we are suffering from such a lack of imagination for the future.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Science, technology, they follow the storytellers.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you don't take the risk, at least in an imaginary way, how can you do it in reality?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I took that premise and then realized I needed to take it a step further because as a documentary storyteller, I was running around the world pointing at all the things that that are wrong.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I realized that actually on a structural level, I had become part of what's wrong because you know the fear really prevents people from acting in a lot of cases.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or when they do act, they start from a place of, well, that's not going to work because of this, as opposed to saying, well, what if we all just imagine how we want things to be and then we find the right partners and we get it done.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: So taking that approach, which is how I've approached my filmmaking, I approached the same way for creating the nonprofit and then for the for-profit as well, because there's really no reason why we need to work in this donor-only kind of structures to do good.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's actually quite problematic because it perpetuates a kind of enslavement of mentality where you're always going to someone and saying, please give me money so I can do this, and then they say, No, we want you to do that.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's always a negotiation, it's always a sale, as opposed to for-profit business, where you're looking at what the need is and you're fulfilling it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's not to say that all businesses work uh in the best practices way, in fact, most of them don't.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Many corporations are really like a virus kind of structure.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: They just are about growth without any concern for the consequences.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't have to structure businesses that way.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where the creativity comes in to be able to say, well, how can we structure a business for the greater good?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: How can we solve the need for green energy, for example, in the best possible way for the greatest outcome for humanity and for nature, because as uh we're destroying our climates, we are destroying nature at an even more rapid rate and facing the sixth uh mass extinction of our planet?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you in terms of your experience of the conference.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: We had, you know, 40 plus people coming from different backgrounds.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Based on your line of work as a storyteller, what perspective did you feel like in the room was maybe missing or that you felt like you offered in the conversation that maybe other people were not seeing or amplifying or taking note of?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: I felt ironically, because as one of the few artists in the room, there was a lot of creativity in the room.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: There was plenty of creativity.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, of course, I bring a different perspective because I've worked intensely with indigenous people around the world.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up with Mother Teresa in India, I've been in the trenches uh since I was a kid of social-oriented impact work.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: But there are plenty of people who had, you know, other very interesting ways of coming to that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, what I felt I really brought to it that was different was a business perspective as well, which is, you know, relatively new in my resume, but it's been my passion for the past decade, is using business models to create the change that we need.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt that there's a certain sense of agency that creating businesses gives you, or you have to have it in order to do it, put it that way around.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the same with creating a film.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you decide, okay, this is what I'm going to do.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I create a blueprint, a business plan, a script, you know, whatever.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're the same thing, basically.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's a written version.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: You work out all the scenarios, you get all the best advice you can, and then you get the funding and you jump in and you make it happen.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: You get the best people possible, you have a plan and you execute.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And execution is everything.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: The ideas are a dime a dozen.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: But being able to make a plan that is executable, that will give you the results that you want, and that your investor is also very important, that they're happy at the end of the day, or whoever sponsors or whatever it is.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: But that structure is a very practical approach.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I find that being able to do that and the work that we've been doing at Open Origin to scale up solutions for green energy for AI data centers, for example, you know, this is one of the big gaps that humanity has right now, that we are all addicted to AI already, and the demand for energy is going to increase by ten times uh in the next decade, according to the studies.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have ten times more energy, even if we burn every fossil fuel that we possibly can, and it looks like we're doing as much as we can, it will not give us the amount of energy that's needed for that kind of scaling up of AI.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to use green solutions, these kinds of grid-free solutions that we're developing.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually very exciting because we can use the demand, the need that humans have for information and knowledge to actually help the green transition to happen.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's not a question of replacing fossil fuels anymore.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's additive.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: But because we're able to do it at the same price as the fossil fuels, you know, the economic principles will, the price will keep going down of the solar and the green.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the economic principles will take us to the place where we need to be.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: The question is how quickly we can do that.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where, you know, being able to accelerate policy, being able to work together with civil society, with all the stakeholders, very important because those who harm the most by climate are the vulnerable communities.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: The women, the indigenous communities, those who've contributed the least to destroying our planet are the ones who are facing the consequences the most.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really important that we use business-like approaches to solving these problems.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I heard a lot of shoulds in the room.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: I heard a lot of, well, there's a responsibility, the companies should do this, the countries should do that, the global north should repay the global south.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: I completely agree.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: But they're not going to do it unless we make it interesting for them.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And there's only two ways to do that.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can either, you know, point a gun at someone to force them to do something, or you can give them something that uh works well with what they're looking for.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the approach that I've been taking.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: On the note of pointing a gun at them, I don't know.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I point a camera at them, and that has also uh certainly a power because when people are put on the spot, they actually are more likely to say what they really believe, and then you can hold them accountable because uh they said it on camera.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I hear you.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: My last question.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how aware of Africa and its opportunities and its shortbacks, but I just wanted to think, as a filmmaker, if we're to direct a film about the current struggles over tariff wars, natural resources, and energy in Africa, what story would you want to tell?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many stories to tell about Africa, and I'm really excited to engage with that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: I have one project already that's advancing, which is actually a story about Mami Wata.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's such a beautiful story because it goes back to the root of African cultures, obviously, so many different African cultures, but it's one story that comes up across the board throughout uh the diaspora as well, all the way to Brazil.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the stories have traveled the world with the colonial and uh slavery projects.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so tracing Mami Wata's journey through the world and the way in which he influences us.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I love to mix mythology with the hard-nosed uh realism, because I believe that that's where our dreams, our aspirations, and our capacities come from is what we believe, the stories that make us love and laugh and dream.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the ones that are going to motivate us much more than the stories of the fear and seeing how terrible the world has become.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh so that's a story that I'll be following.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there are many others to explore.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Indrani, for joining me today.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.