环境活动家和Filmmaker Elsa Sebastian'13正在努力保护她的阿拉斯加的家

Elsa Sebastian ’13’s hometown of Point Baker, Alaska, is situated on Prince of Wales Island, and its few dozen inhabitants live in houses perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. At its heart is a dock, where salmon-fishing boats are tied up in winter. There’s a floating post office and a floating town hall. Once a week, a floatplane lands in the bay and delivers mail and a few small grocery items. In winter, storms are often so fierce that the plane can’t land for weeks at a time.

“成长离网令人惊叹，”塞巴斯蒂安说。“我无法想象一个幸福的童年。居住在贝克的人非常多彩，也有很多人在这个地方找到了一个家，即使在世界其他地方难以找到接受。人们真的互相照顾。生活在这样一个狂野的地方真的培养了慷慨的精神。“

It was in Point Baker that Sebastian learned to love remote landscapes, and where her desire to protect them was born. Her journey would take her across the country to Wellesley College, where she learned the tools of filmmaking, and back again, where she would deploy them to protect the old-growth temperate rainforests of her home island.Understory, Sebastian’s recently released film, documents the beauty and importance of theTongass National Forest, and the threats it faces from clearcut logging.

All photos are provided by Colin Arisman.

Childhood in the Wild

Growing up, Sebastian never envisioned moving away for college, or even attending a four-year institution. “I always thought I’d attend community college,” Sebastian said. “But I was drawn to Wellesley by the generous financial aid package. Wellesley basically supported my entire education.”

Throughout Sebastian’s childhood, her parents would move the family of four and their dog onto their 42-foot wooden salmon troller and fish the ocean for months at a time. Sebastian started deckhanding on commercial fishing boats as a teenager and was salmon fishing right up until she left for Wellesley. The transition to East Coast college life was abrupt.

“I was working on a commercial fishing boat the summer after graduating high school, and my contract went pretty late into the season,” Sebastian said. “I had to miss orientation, and I flew to Wellesley the day before classes started. I didn’t have time to go home and swap out my fishing duffel, so I literally showed up at Wellesley in dirty Carhartt pants with a duffel bag of clothes. I definitely reeked of salmon.”

An Education in Film

At Wellesley, Sebastian said, “everything was new.” It was a major adjustment to be so far from wild places, and from mountains, and the Pacific. “It was a definite culture shock to move from a forest to a very controlled, human-dominated landscape,” Sebastian said. “I remember being really unsettled by leaf blowers in the fall, and watching people tend the squares of grass in front of their houses.”

塞巴斯蒂安最终来欣赏“校园和社区的不同类型的美丽”。她还发现了电影制作。在她的二年级学年开始时，塞巴斯蒂安在阿拉斯加朱诺的实习生举办了一个学期，Trout Unlimited是一项致力于保护，保护和恢复北美冷水渔业及其流域的国家非营利组织。在那里，她致力于国家分配Red Gold, a film documenting the tension between native fishermen who opposed the Pebble Mine project and officials who said they would build a “clean” mine that would leave the salmon’s habitat untouched. Sebastian supported screenings in the Midwest, the Southwest, and other places far from Alaska.

“我对那部电影的涉嫌人来说真的很深刻，”塞巴斯蒂安说。“我看到了一部好电影如何激励人们关于一个问题，以及电影制片人如何激励人们试图生活，以越来越多的心，激情和承诺。”

Sebastian returned to Wellesley for her third year “fired up” about filmmaking, and enrolled in a class withSalem Mekuria，艺术教授，在Wellesley的教授Cinema and Media Studiesprogram. “I felt immediately at home, like it was a place for me to explore and make mistakes,” Sebastian said. “Professor Mekuria seemed to immediately believe in me, and she was really supportive of my creative vision.”

在Wellesley，Sebastian致力于两部长电影项目：一个关于佛蒙特州的Banjo制造商，另一个关于一群关于一群港口城市的年轻女性，努力恢复第一艘船被一个女人在大西洋上乘坐独奏作为教导风险青年关于当地海事传统和交易的倡议的一部分。

The Genesis ofUnderstory

The seed forUnderstorywas planted in 2017. That year, Sebastian embarked upon a “ground-truthing” project withNatalie Dawson, a biologist who studies endemic species of the Tongass, andMara Menahan, a botanical illustrator. They wanted to better understand a recently proposed land giveaway, championed by Alaska politicians and the timber industry, that would transfer 2 million acres of federally owned rainforest on Prince of Wales Island and elsewhere to the state of Alaska for logging and mining.

“The basic idea of ground-truthing is going to the land to see for yourself if what you’re being told is true,” Sebastian explained. “I couldn't wrap my head around the scale of the proposed giveaway. I wanted to see things from ground level. I wanted to measure the threat with my own steps.”

在一个月的过程中，三名女性丛林淹没了150英里的雨林受到拟议的公共土地赠品的威胁。“这是一个非常具有挑战性的经历，但我们对铜头的谈话是惊人的，”塞巴斯蒂安说。“我们基本上通过像动物这样的受威胁的森林，并以这种方式通过景观，教导我们艰苦的，难忘的教训，了解如何对森林影响如何影响森林。”

The more time they spent on the ground, the more Sebastian, Dawson, and Menahan felt inspired to share their story. “A few years later, when we had the opportunity to make a film together, we jumped on it,” Sebastian said.

That opportunity arrived in the form of科林arisman., a nonfiction filmmaker, founder ofWild Confluence Media, and Sebastian’s partner, whom she met when she was serving as interim director of theLynn Canal Conservation在阿拉斯加海恩斯。Arisman在镇上致力于该电影关于该地区拟议的采矿项目的电影。

“这是一个经典的阿拉斯加保护浪漫，”塞巴斯蒂安说。“我们的第一次约会在一个没有门的小灌木丛中一起飞越拟议的矿山。几乎在我们的关系开始时，我们发现汤斯立即受到拟议的规则变化的威胁。“

The Trump administration was attempting to overturn the “Roadless Rule“托管国家森林的保护，塞巴斯蒂安家族的保护措施在前几十年里帮助了华盛顿的大厅。

“娜塔莉，玛拉，我意识到我们需要继续我们对汤斯的探索，”塞巴斯蒂安说。“我们想知道森林对森林意味着什么，我们想去土地寻找这些森林值得的语言。科林提供与我们合作，帮助分享我们的探险故事，我们的团队意识到纪录片电影可以帮助我们达到全国受众。“

制作电影

射击Understorywas an immense undertaking. The crew of three lived on Sebastian’s 38-foot sailboat for a month, along with two cinematographers and all of their film equipment. “My sailboat is not a fancy boat,” Sebastian said. “It was packed, and it was challenging to balance our time ground-truthing with shooting the film.” It was Sebastian’s first long trip in her boat, and the crew had to navigate major engine issues and unpredictable weather.

Editing the film proved challenging, too. “Colin and I worked on it together, and it was also our first experience living together,” Sebastian said. The pandemic hit just as they were wrapping up the first draft of the film. “It was basically the two of us living in this tiny house, editing the film constantly,” Sebastian said. “We edited so many more drafts, and at times it felt really isolating. With documentary film, you never really know if what you have is great or garbage, and it’s the final details that make the film flow: audio engineering, color, custom scoring.” In addition, they were actively fundraising for the next steps of production.

During that time, Sebastian reconnected withWinifred Jane Wood., senior lecturer emerita in the writing program, who had mentored Sebastian in her filmmaking projects at Wellesley.

“Professor Wood was an amazing support forUnderstory,” Sebastian said. “She took time to write pages of feedback, and break down the meaning of each scene in a very academic way. None of our other story advisors did that, and when it came time to make some hard decisions about the film, like which scenes to cut, her perspective was incredibly helpful.”

The film premiered online on February 25 and is an official selection at several film festivals. “We’ve been incredibly relieved and excited by how well received the film is,” Sebastian said. “It all feels worth it now.”

AfterUnderstory

塞巴斯蒂安计划继续倡导通汤。她和Arisman正在筹集秋天的宣传活动Understory，专注于保护旧增长森林作为碳储备和气候保护区，并达到高中和大学生。

“We think it’s incredibly important that young folks know that there are still ancient forests left in the United States, trees that are literally one thousand years old, and that leaving those forests standing will help stabilize the climate more efficiently than planting tree farms,” Sebastian said.

Sebastian also plans to partner with Wild Confluence Media and Arisman on future conservation films.

“I realized through makingUnderstorythat my favorite part of documentary filmmaking is shooting interviews and reviewing transcripts,” Sebastian said. “I love breaking complex arguments down, simplifying things, and helping connect those arguments to emotional responses. It’s very challenging work, and it’s extremely enjoyable. I think my education at Wellesley and my work in the trades have given me a unique skill set as an environmental storyteller, and it’s pretty amazing to be able to find work that so perfectly expresses that background.”