A Royal Roads professor and Cowichan Carbon Busters icon Peter Nix will be on hand for a discussion as the Eye Opener documentary film series kicks off for 2016 with Life Off Grid on Thursday, Feb. 4 at Duncan United Church starting at 7 p.m.
Film producer Dr. Phillip Vannini joins Nix for an education evening that is also hosted by the church’s Social Justice group.
The idea behind the film is that “off-grid” isn’t a state of mind. It’s not about being out of touch, living in a remote place, or turning off that ever-present mobile phone.
Off-grid means living without a connection to the electric and natural gas infrastructure, explain proponents.
To live off-grid means radically reinventing daily life in a dramatically innovative but also quite traditional way.
From 2011 to 2013, the film’s director Jonathan Taggart and Vannini spent two years travelling across Canada to find off-gridders and visit them in their homes. Sometimes they lived with these people for a short period of time.
Sometimes they followed them around as they hunted, fished, harvested, collected wood, and built their homes. And at times they, too, practised living in off-grid homes and cabins.
Over two years Taggart and Vannini visited about 100 homes and interviewed about 200 off-grid Canadians, as well as many American and British expats living in Canada. They met off-gridders in every single province and territory and through their film they narrated their travels and chronicled in depth the experiences, challenges, inventions, aspirations, and ways of life of some of them.
They flew on planes, rode snowmobiles and ATVs, paddled kayaks and canoes, donned snowshoes and sailed on ferries and small boats as their travels took them everywhere.
The off-gridders themselves were young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural but they belie the stereotypes, the filmmakers said.
They’re individuals who care about their family and their environment, about their homes, communities, and their place in the world and may inspire viewers to ask questions and follow their examples, the filmmakers said.
Admission is free or by donation.