Like all great documentaries, Franklin goes deep.

At its core, it’s a film about the epic seven-year campaign to save Tasmania’s World Heritage-listed Franklin River and the importance of environmental protection, but it also encompasses the intergenerational journey of Oliver Cassidy and his father Mike, while also being a story of Oliver’s personal transformation and self discovery which led him to this moment in his life. 

The story is told through the eyes of 8th generation Tasmanian, Oliver, as he follows in his activist father’s footsteps and embarks on a solo rafting pilgrimage down the Franklin. In the process, he retraces the campaign, exploring why it was so successful when others have failed, and what lessons can be applied to other non-violent movements today. All this while being physically challenged beyond anything he has ever known, in a remote and extraordinary landscape most people won’t ever get to experience … until now. 

Franklin is directed by Australian filmmaker Kasimir Burgess.

Kasimir’s debut feature film Fell, starring Matt Nable in his first leading role, had its world premiere in Official Competition at Sydney International Film Festival and garnered critical acclaim from publications including the Hollywood Reporter and Screen Daily.

His previous feature documentary, The Leunig Fragments, screened in competition at both the 2019 Sydney and Melbourne International Film Festivals. It was released in cinemas nationwide in 2020 and followed by high ratings on the ABC. 

In this interview, Burgess discusses the dangers of filming on the Franklin, making the film with a determined Oliver, and working with actor Hugo Weaving who had his own personal connection to the Franklin River protests.

“One of our rafts got sucked into a rapid, or a nasty notch as it’s called. We lost a food barrel containing our breakfasts. We managed to retrieve the raft but as a result we were on rations for the rest of the shoot and hungry. That was a rude awakening.”

 

Interview by Matthew Eeles

I’m curious to know what came first here, the desire to make a film about the Franklin River protests, or Oliver’s story?
I had to think about that for a moment. It was Oliver’s story. His personal story is what drew me in. I realised that the historical story, the environmental story, needed a personal lens make it sing. My mum had died around this time also. I definitely had an attraction to enter that world of grief and how you move through it. I empathised with Oliver fully, as I did at that time with my own loss. I was interested in how this river trip would help him move through his own grief.

Considering you had just lost your mum, did it help you move through your own grief as well?
Yeah, it did. More because I’m watching Oliver move through his grief, so it’s maybe more retrospective, more of a broader, bigger picture, not so much day-by-day that I was moving through my grief. I didn’t necessarily have time to do anything other than gather the shots and attempt to do justice to the natural beauty of the Franklin as we moved down it. I think the process of making the film, and watching it back now, is all part of how you evolve beyond losing a loved one or, in my case, my main mentor in life.

How and when did you first meet Oliver?
Chris Kamen, the producer and a long time friend of mine, we were trying to find something to work on together for some years. It was Chris who introduced me to Oliver and immediately I was seduced by the emotional scope of his story. And also just Oliver in general. Oliver has depth and he’s articulate and charismatic. It was from that first impression that it began to dawn upon me that we could tell a really dynamic, multi-layered story about a really rousing and inspiring group of everyday people who stood up for what they believed in and fought for, but through Oliver eyes.

It certainly is multi-layered. Tell us about staying focused on the story at hand, especially during the edit of the film. It could easily have all fallen apart at that stage.
I think what kept us on track was the river as a constant and central character, and always coming back to that throughout the film. A lot of the archive and the history is set and filmed around the river in beautiful Super 8 and 16mm. We also had Oliver on the river so it wasn’t hard to stay on track or to stay on story because we were always on the river, whether it was in the past, or the present. That might seem like a simplistic answer, but at the beginning we may have been a bit overwhelmed with the many story threads, but once I found that small piece of logic in the river as the central character, I had the confidence to move forward.

You’ve said that you were only a few years old when the Franklin blockade took place, yet you have a strong memory of the TV reports. Can you tell us what you remember from that time?
Maybe perhaps not a strong memory. [Laughs]. But it’s certainly a memory of an image from a rally with a sea of humanity sneaking off into the distance. When I found that piece of footage 35 years later it came back, and that memory seemed to mirror the river itself. I’m not a particularly intellectual filmmaker, but it kind of just hit home. I found it quite touching. It went straight to my heart and that river of humanity reminded me to find those more poetic or symbolic, metaphorical connections within our own image making, between the past and the present.

Are you an environmentalist, or an activist?
It’s a tricky one. I’m not a constant activist. I care deeply about the environment. But I also often feel guilty for not doing everything I can, or for not going to all the rallies.

Don’t feel too guilty. This film is your activism in a way. You’re going to reach a huge audience with this film and that’s a great contribution to environmental activism.
Thank you. I think so too. Chris and Oliver are the real environmentalists. So we all compliment each other in different ways when it comes to our passion for the environment. I just wanted to tell a beautiful, rousing and moving story for a new generation, whether they be activists, environmentalists, or just cinema-goers. It was clear to me from the beginning that I wanted to avoid a film that was didactic, or hitting people over the head with messaging. A lot of those films have a wrap up towards the end that shows animals dying, bushfires, huge slabs of ice falling apart in Antarctica. It was important to me to avoid that and to tell a dramatic story in an understated way and let it be. I wanted to let the story’s own activism speak for itself.

Through Mike’s words, through Oliver’s journey, and through your lens, we’re constantly reminded how dangerous and unforgiving the Franklin River can be. How dangerous was this shoot for you and your team?
It felt very dangerous from day to day. On day two, one of our rafts got sucked into a rapid, or a nasty notch as it’s called. We lost a food barrel containing our breakfasts. We managed to retrieve the raft but as a result we were on rations for the rest of the shoot and hungry. That was a rude awakening and something that made me realise that we really needed to treat this river with respect and care. Sometimes the cinematographer Ben Bryan and I would be out in the middle of the river holding onto each other trying to get a shot. Occasionally ourselves and the camera were swept away and we’d just have to ride it out and get to shore as quick as possible. The camera was in an underwater housing for a lot of the shoot because we just had to assume that it was going to take a dip some of the time. [Laughs]. We talk about the danger to ourselves, but we cared more about the danger to our media and to the data that we were gathering. Each day we were filming and recording to hard-drives. Chris was producing and also data wrangling. So at nighttime he’d be in a cave often with speleothems and dripping bits around him just trying to secure the footage which is irreplaceable. You can’t just go back up the Franklin and re-shoot. You’re constantly hurtling forward. I loved that contrast though between the high-tech world and the stone age. [Laughs].

Have you ever done anything this physical for a shoot before?
No. I mean, Fell had its challenges. There were moments on Fell where we were a hundred meters up in a treetop, actually in the clouds, and I’m afraid of heights. So that was a whole other level. Another challenge with Franklin was not knowing what was going to happen with Oliver and how he’s going to respond to the many challenges that popped up for him. In a way, that was our greatest concern. I don’t want to sound like I lack any empathy for Oliver’s journey here, but we also had it in the back of our minds that if something dramatic happened to Oliver, then there’s no film.

Was Oliver conscious of that? Did he have that mutual respect for what your team was trying to achieve?
I’m sure he did because he was so invested in the film as one of the producers. So year, there was a mutual respect, and a mutual fear for our combined safety. [Laughs]. Also a shared fear and respect of the river.

Has this experience made you reassess your filmmaking approach and they way you’ll make movies going forward?
I think it has. Having survived the Franklin, I think it will give me more confidence to survive any challenges that are thrown at me on future shoots. Yes. Each film you make leaves some scar tissue and it kind of builds up layer upon sedimentary layer of scar tissue. [Laughs]. There’s a part of you that does become a bit more resilient and battle weary. I was exhausted after this trip because of the physical and the emotional demands, and the complexity of the environment.

Hugo Weaving narrates Mike’s diary entries throughout the film. How did Hugo’s involvement come about?
It was Oliver’s suggestion. We were throwing around ideas for a narrator. We asked Oliver what Australian actor might play Mike, his father, because who’s going to know better than Oliver, because none of us had met Mike. Oliver told us Hugo Weaving could be the one because his voice is similar to Mike’s. To Oliver, Hugo is the voice of Australia.[Laughs]. We got in touch with Hugo and he said yes very quickly. We didn’t know why he was so keen to come onboard but let me tell you a story I haven’t told anyone yet.
We were in Melbourne recording and Hugo abruptly stopped us half way through recording and said, “Kas, can you stop this recording for a second?” I thought that I’d maybe overstepped, or that I’d done something wrong, or offended him. Then he said, “I really need to tell you this story.” Hugo told us that back in the early eighties he had a girlfriend who told him she was leaving to Tasmania to help save the Franklin. She told him there was a movement of people going there to try to save it. She wanted Hugo to go with her, but he declined the offer to go because he was at NIDA at the time and he had auditions and his career as an actor was just starting to take off. Hugo told us, quite emotionally, that he always regretted not having gone, and that making this film with us now was an opportunity to go back to that time and contribute in some way.

That’s a great little story.
Right? He was quite emotional and it was so heartfelt.

There’s a moment in the film that covers the indeginous caves and the importance of preserving and protecting that area. Can you tell us about the decision not to enter the caves?
Oliver had quite a strong impulse, and as he describes in the movie, he had a gut feeling that he wasn’t welcome into that ancient, sacred place without being invited in. We were all on board with that. There was a part of us as filmmakers that wanted to go in there to film something that is going to be cinematic or moving. To have documented the place would have been fantastic. I feel like he made the right decision for himself, and for all of us.

Did you consult any indigenous elders about filming in certain areas?
Auntie Patsy Cameron was one of the elders we spoke with. She told Oliver that he’ll know from within himself the right things to do once he reached certain points of the river and that what ever his decisions were once he was there that he wouldn’t be judged. There was something nice about imagining the space within those caves, rather than actually going into them. It’s almost like we were dreaming of what it would be like inside. For the film itself, we did have a few shots of the 16mm footage. Layering that footage with Emma Bortignon’s sound design of the dripping cave sounds and video and audio of elder Jim Everett talking about his experience in the cave made those 16mm shots much more powerful.

The film rarely discusses the Franklin River’s wildlife. Can you tell us about any of your encounters with wildlife throughout the shoot.
There’s a shot of an eagle. [Laughs]. There’s a little leech that’s on Oliver. And then also a little bug that’s like a little prehistoric armoured bug that Oliver started up a little friendship with. The wildlife along the Franklin is abundant, but it’s so good at making itself scarce when people come by. It was a dilemma of ours that once we pulled the camera out and started filming the animals were smart enough to hide themselves away from us.

I’d love to go back to your 2014 feature film debut Fell for a moment. I love that movie. You gave Matt Nabel his first leading role, and we were introduced to this incredible new filmmaker on the scene. You’ve made two feature documentaries since Fell. Have you found your calling with documentaries, or do you have a desire to make another feature film?
I certainly haven’t found my calling in documentary. My mindset is that I tell the best story I can tell through the opportunity that presents itself at the time. You have to lean into your interests and wherever your heart is at that moment. If you get seduced or excited by something, then generally you should go with it. I feel like the last few projects, the documentaries, have been much harder to make in terms of control over the story or the narrative, and it can be more taxing in some ways. That’s not to undermine what it takes to make feature film. I’m really looking forward to working on something that I’ve written and can cast and choose locations for. I can’t say too much, but I am working on some things. [Laughs].

Franklin is in cinemas now.