Ji.hlava fest audiences who packed the cinema at the Czech Republic’s doc showcase to see “Power Station” found themselves feeling unexpectedly upbeat, they said following the film about taking on climate change one street at a time.
The 29th edition of the fest is showing off its usual rich selection of progressive programming to be sure, but in terms of emotion, one viewer told co-directors Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn, films here are usually more about getting angry or perhaps somber.
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But laughter and spectacle – along with impressive civic organizing – are the trademarks of this bickering, hustling married couple, as they’ve shown off in their past films.
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The two managed to revive a Soviet-era distillery that had been seized by the state in Ukraine in their 2012 doc “How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire,” before moving onto “Bank Job” in 2021, in which they bought up and forgave $1.5 million in predatory loans – naturally by blasting a golden van sky high.
So it seems what the dueling duo actually create are as much caper films as docs.
This time around, in “Power Station,” competing for the main doc prize at Ji.hlava, the two decide to take on the U.K.’s growing energy crisis, in which more and more of the populace is struggling to pay their monthly power bills.
Cut to Lynmouth Road, Walthamstow in London’s northeast: As 39% of the United Kingdom populace struggles to heat their homes, Edelstyn and Powell huddle under blankets themselves, trying vainly to warm up with endless mugs of tea.
They hustle to feed the household, make it to school pickups and juggle Zoom calls for civic organizing, meeting with the likes of political economist Ann Pettifor, and, um, oh yeah, launch a green energy movement to power their entire neighborhood – and hopefully the rest of England eventually with those free solar panels.
Since even the most progressive party’s elected leaders clearly aren’t up to that task, it falls upon communities to show it can be done, Edelstyn says. Hopefully, when enough people see green energy working with their own eyes, the state will finally catch on.
But first we’ll need some compelling characters, weighed down by the dropping temperatures and rising bills, Edelstyn decides.
“Actually, it helps the hero,” he assures Powell after filming unwashed dishes, “to be unable to keep up with all this stuff. To have vulnerabilities.”
She’s not impressed with the pitch, she lets him know.
But Edelstyn’s case is clear: “What are they doing with our taxes?” he asks. “The government should be giving everyone solar panels.”
And if they won’t, these artist agitators will.
This time, it may take camping out on their rooftop in record cold winter, blasted by winds and at one point iced over to raise the funds for their neighbors’ panels.
But if so, Edelstyn and Powell are more than willing to endure the soaked bedding in the dark.
And what audiences soon realize is, they’re not just watching two unlikely characters launching a movement – they’re actually seeing them construct the film.
“You bastard,” Hilary cries when filmed brushing out tangles in her hair. “Stop it!”
“You’re like very public and you’re sharing every feeling and emotion and I’m like what the fu…?”
Meanwhile, Powell puts together remarkably detailed charts of plans, spreadsheets, models and, eventually, an elaborate form of local currency.
Powell finds her partner’s narrative style a major pain, at times, she says, asking him, “Can you stop presenting? I think you’re the worst documentary maker in the world.”
They confer with Tom Ruxton of the HEET Project to learn that 27% of the population of Walthamstow Forest is now considered fuel poor, the second highest rate in London.
Edelstyn makes the case that if the government would actually turn “every home in this country…turn it into a power station, the cost of that would be paid for by the sun itself within about a 10-year period. So it’s just absurd that that’s not happening. So why don’t we make it happen?”
Next step, going door to door and offering people free solar panels. But this is London, of course – will they even open the door?
Soon enough, Edelstyn gets to actually know his neighbors, including a woman born in the 1920s whose knees have gone “a bit wobbly” from lack of getting out during the shutdown and a Pakistan-born man whose walls are deteriorating because he devotes all his earnings to his children’s education.
Just convincing the neighbors that a shared energy system is a realistic solution is half the battle, it turns out.
But in the grand tradition of protest art, the two win over even the most cynical in their community, winning media coverage and eventually an energy company sponsor, and the solar panels begin going up.
Working with the U.K.’s Optimistic Foundation, the couple are now sharing their organizing template – which they say has become effective at giving local schools solar too.
“Power Station” builds on laughs tinged with poignancy to show what an assortment of struggling neighbors can actually do to turn things around.
“We are trying – through the story telling of one street, all of the different characters and history of this one place – to show, actually we can have the power to make change,” as Powell puts it.
“Power Station,” a production of Dartmouth Films and co-produced by Powell and Edelstyn, is now screening in U.K. cinemas.