Driftlines Film Festival: Shorts Program I - Self Determination and Ocean Pollution
About this event
This program features two short documentaries, Pie Dan Lo (Black Tide) (2024) and Ujjirijavut (We See Changes) (2025). The screenings will be followed by a discussion session with Pie Dan Lo Director Kim Yip Tong (joining online), moderated by Dr. Jessica Vandenberg.
About the films
Pie Dan Lo (2024, 14 min): In 2020, the bulk carrier MV Wakashio ran aground off the east coast of Mauritius, releasing nearly 1,000 tons of oil into the Indian Ocean. Pie Dan Lo captures the devastation of this disaster with acute intensity, brought to life through the vivid, hand-painted images of director Kim Yip Tong. This animated film traces the collective response of local communities, as people across Mauritius unite to protect their island and the many human, animal, and plant lives that call it home. The film highlights the umbilical bond between coastal peoples and the sea – a bond both ruptured and renewed in the wake of this catastrophe. Pie Dan Lo is a story of solidarity and communal resilience, a short and powerful critique of systemic failures in environmental governance and the destructive reach of the global petrochemical industry.
Ujjirijavut (2025, 30 min): Ujjirijavut (We See Changes) shares the first-hand story of James Simonee, an Inuit filmmaker and hunter from Pond Inlet, as he investigates the long-term effects of an iron mine on his community. Simonee studies the layered impacts of industrial development, as new shipping routes disrupt marine life and iron ore dust contaminates fish and marine mammals – vital sources of food for Pond Inlet. The film offers a model of Indigenous-led research, integrating laboratory testing for toxins in marine species with elders’ knowledge and lived observations of environmental change. As the mining company seeks to expand operations, the people of Pond Inlet face a difficult trade-off between employment opportunities and the preservation of Inuit landscapes and lifeways for future generations. Ultimately, Ujjirijavut is a story of resistance and hope, as the community mobilizes to block the mine’s expansion and assert sovereignty over the future of their territory.
Participant Bios
Pie Dan Lo Director Kim Yip Tong is a multidisciplinary artist from Mauritius. She studied textile design in Paris and London, earning a Master's in Information Experience Design from the Royal College of Art in London in 2017. Her current research focuses on natural history and postcolonial identity. Her practice includes kinetic installations, video mapping, painting, art direction, and music video production. She has created two planetarium animations, "Lucent Matter" (2016) and "Anthozoa" (2017), which have been featured in international festivals. Her work has been exhibited in various countries, and she is a professor of contemporary art at the ENSA Nantes Mauritius School of Architecture.
Discussant Dr. Jessica Vandenberg is an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rhode Island. Drawing on political ecology, critical social sciences and multi-modal ethnographic methods, her research explores questions of power, knowledge, and equity related to ocean governance. Her research focuses on the rise of corporate environmental governance and technological solutionism in conservation and environmental management, but also explores paths towards decolonizing environmental governance that prioritize diverse ways of knowing, reflexive and relational thinking, and nature-cultural relations. Her dissertation research examined the human dimensions of a corporate-led coral reef restoration program implemented in a small island community in Indonesia and how colonial legacies and ongoing neoliberal forces in the region influence local experiences of restoration outcomes. Her current work examines the involvement of corporations in the global governance of plastic pollution and the material and discursive effects of this influence.
The Driftlines Ocean Justice Film Festival is supported by Nippon Foundation-Ocean Nexus and The University of Rhode Island.