If Not Now Film, Daksha Patel

As one of the LUNZ Hub Creative Collaborative Placement Artists, Daksha Patel has created the film ‘If Not Now’. In this blog, Daksha shares the film and discusses her process …

This blog reflects upon the final outcome of my residency – an artist’s film called ‘If Not Now’. The film evolved out of my conversations with Rothamsted Research about how a time-based medium was best placed to reveal the complex and interrelated themes connected to land use in UK farming. Further funding supported its production.

Illustrations of microbes set against a sky with clouds

Film still from If Not Now

As always, it takes time to explore ideas and develop a conceptual approach for my artist’s films. I knew I wanted to avoid using technical terminology, to avoid sharing facts and figures and generally telling people what to think. Three central visual elements – sky, water and earth – are integral to the film. A conversation between two people that acknowledges the wider implications of farming practice in the UK is the soundtrack.

Developing the script became my starting point for the film. I collaborated with a writer/director Kevin Dyer to write and voice the script. It is a poetic and reflective conversation about habitat loss, biodiversity, pollution, soil health, food security and climate change. The tone is very open and questioning; it is an enquiry that takes the audience with the narrators on a journey. They use everyday language; they question without offering answers. Their stories allude to issues indirectly without attributing blame or criticising. The phrase ‘climate change’ isn’t used directly, but the threat to food security is referred to by describing how:

The seasons, natures rhythms are changing. The familiar patterns are unpredictable and extreme. Winters are warm and wet, the ticks love it, the slugs love it. Pathogens flourish.

An image of a tractor and a stone built barn, with green grass in a field

Footage of an old-fashioned tractor and a stone farmhouse suggest the changes in farming over time. There is a sense of nostalgia about missing the wildflowers and the taste of food grown in healthy soil. Instead of statistics about biodiversity loss, the voices appeal to the senses and a desire to reclaim those things:

I miss the speckle of Cornflowers and Snakehead Fritillary in the meadows. I miss the taste of food grown in soil alive with microorganisms. Rich and moist like dark chocolate cake.

A green set of blocks forming a graph are set in front of a field

Animated drawings are layered over video footage. Pathogens, chemical pollutants and greenhouse gases are represented as colourful drawings flowing into a stream or over fields and sky. Drawings of dragonflies and swifts appear and disappear. The animations appeal to the senses through sound, colour and image. Nevertheless, the film doesn’t avoid asking the big questions:

The question is, who is listening? Is it the landowners, the politicians, economists? Is it the people in the supermarkets? Are we ready to change the way we feed ourselves?

And it ends with the urgency of ‘If not now, then when?’

Further Research

The film will be screened during events at Rothamsted Research with groups of farmers, landowners, and the general public. It will act as a ‘conversation starter’ between scientists and local stakeholders. A QR code at the end of the film will take viewers to a short questionnaire where people can share their thoughts about the questions raised in the film. This feedback will be shared with LUNZ evaluators, and in future, may be used as part of a paper about the project I plan to write.