WIEBO’S WAR
Directed by David York
Saturday, September 24
12:15 p.m.
Globe Cinema
There’s no shortage of documentaries pointing out the brutal environmental track record of the oilsands. Two Alberta-funded films about the subject — Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands and Dirty Oil — are currently under government scrutiny with cries of censorship and propaganda emerging from both camps. The releases of Downstream and Tar Sands: The Selling of Alberta have only added to the political chaos.
But Wiebo’s War isn’t just the rehashing of already stated facts about Fort Chip and mutated fish. Instead, the 93-minute documentary tells a story about Wiebo Ludwig — the controversial Christian activist convicted of pipeline bombings in the ’90s — and the effects of the invasive oil and gas industry upon him and the isolated community he lives in.
Writer, director and producer David York entered the lives of Trickle Creek residents to tell the story of a man whose “conflicts were behind him.” The sabotaging of well sites in the mid- to late-1990s had been legally dealt with, and the infamous shooting of 16-year-old Karman Willis was unresolved. But York had suspicions that the story wasn’t yet over.
“I knew that there was a very filmic past-tense story that was dramatic and had tragic elements to it,” York says. “But I was also aware that there was a huge unconventional gas boom going on in the area and on the other side of the B.C. border. I had a pretty good idea that Wiebo and his family wouldn’t take it lying down.”
Within a week, York was proven potentially correct. Stories began to appear on the evening news about the Tomslake, B.C. bombings. Ludwig was soon arrested as a suspect due to his convictions for the pipeline bombings in the ’90s. He was later released. Suddenly, York found himself filming a completely different story than originally intended.
But the path to get to that point wasn’t simple. At the beginning of the film, clips of a three-hour discussion that York had with the Ludwig family in 2008 were shown. The community obviously distrusted York due to his lack of religious beliefs, and the director now admits that at one point he thought he wouldn’t be able to make the film. Eventually, the family gave permission for the documentary to be shot.
The role of faith didn’t stop there. York was subjected to many conversations in regards to the subject; the Ludwig family ended their participation in the film due to the atheistic — but not anti-Christian — worldview that the filmmaker held.
“Jokingly and with affection, we call those times ‘atheist smackdowns,’” York says. “That’s what those scenes were and sometimes that’s what they felt like. They were always challenging and difficult, and we had dozens of them.”
Although the level of religious zeal may lead viewers to assume that the Trickle Creek community were irrational in their dealings with the oil and gas industry, York suggests the opposite in his film. Much of the first half of Wiebo’s War is dedicated to a mere fraction of the hundreds of hours of footage taken by the Ludwig family of the effects of well sites upon the community. In one especially shocking scene, footage is shown of the burial of an aborted fetus — which the community blames on sour gas.
In spite of the evidence shown in the film, the Trickle Creek community has been continually ignored. York still disagrees with them in regards to their religious beliefs, but admits that he has “admiration” for their way of life and ends the film with a teary Wiebo encouraging his community despite the fact that yet another well is being built beside their property.
“I think that if you took those controversial factors out of the equation he would have a lot of support,” York concludes. “That’s the tragedy. That’s why the last scene in the film is there. I think that by the end of the film you understand a) that they’re going to keep on fighting and b) that they’re going to have to do it alone.”
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