Join Sheffield Transformed for a screening of How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
The film follows a collection of activists driven by a variety of motivations to destroy fossil fuel infrastructure in West Texas. Loosely inspired by the political arguments addressed in Andreas Malm's book of the same name, which garnered widespread attention and critical discussion, 'How to Blow Up a Pipeline' is a story based around the core thesis of the book: that property destruction and sabotage of infrastructure is a valid and crucial action to take in the face of ecological collapse driven by capitalism.
The plot and cinematography bear many of the hallmarks of a heist thriller, while also viscerally portraying the presently unfolding societal consequences of environmental destruction. At the same time, the film explores the complex questions which surround how we choose to react to this catastrophe - does the environmental violence unleashed by capitalists justify violence in response?
Before the screening begins, local activist Alice Swift will speak about real-life efforts to resist fossil fuel extraction projects.
Alice has been an anti-capitalist climate justice activist for 16 years. She co-founded the fossil fuel divestment movement in 2013, helped stop fracking with Reclaim the Power, and has been fighting against coal and fossil gas with Ende Gelände in Germany since 2015. In recent years she worked on the Stop Rosebank campaign against North Sea oil and gas and the campaign to stop deforested trees (biomass) being used to generate electricity. She is currently working for the Green Party and finishing her PhD on the use of protest camps in the European climate justice movement.
Event description by organisers.
