'Why should I try to have a future?' The Weather Diaries, Lupa J and a she-wolf's lament
Kathy Drayton set out to make a documentary about the plight of Australian flying foxes. She ended up making one about her daughter instead There had been previous obsessions; with eagles, with kangaroos. But when Imogen Jones first saw Princess Mononoke, a 1997 Japanese anime film that was made about the same time she was born, her alignment with the girl raised by wolves would be so profound that she would dress up as the character for years of her childhood. Later she would name her electro-pop alter ego, Lupa J, in honour of the character. The fact that she was so fiercely passionate about the animals in the wilderness resonated with me, Jones tells Guardian Australia. She was the first female character that Id seen that was wild. If Princess Mononoke is a guiding force for Jones, Jones herself becomes such a force for her mothers beautifully bleak documentary, The Weather Diaries , which premieres online this week as part of the 2020 Sydney film festival. Originally, the focus of the film was on climate change and the flying foxes that were being evicted from Sydneys Royal Botanic Gardens. But then Jones, who attended the Conservatorium high school thats situated in the gardens, herself became the central motif in a film that Kathy Drayton now describes as a meditation on her daughters future. Filmed over six years, The Weather Diaries follows Jones from when she was a 15-year-old violinist struggling to find her identity within a conservative school, to when she releases her first album, Swallow Me Whole, and ends up touring with Sarah Blasko and Grimes. In parallel to her daughters story, Drayton shadows rescuers working with the megabats, and researchers who are subjecting the Parramatta red gum to the conditions of a 3C hotter climate (predicted by 2070). During the course of filming, temperatures reach 47C and the flying foxes start dying in droves. The final scenes, shot in December 2019, show the devastation of the bushfires. As one of the researchers, Mike Aspinwall, from the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, comments: Changes arent likely to happen until people really start to hurt. But by the time people hurt, he concedes, its too late. In turn, Drayton reflects on Aspinwalls data collection, as he weighs and measures our descent into disaster: Perhaps well be the first species to record its own extinction, she says in the voiceover. And that will be our most remarkable achievement. Drayton acknowledges that documentaries about the climate emergency are seen in the industry as ratings killers: to find an audience they need to offer grounds for optimism. But as her career starts to take off, Jones who is now 21 loses her own sense of hope. Theres a sense of futility in creating anything at all against a backdrop of mass extinction: Why should I even try to have a future at all? she asks her mother. What does it matter, if I die when Im young? Drayton films her daughter close to tears and wondering almost spookily, given the pandemic that was yet to come if there would even be places that she could play her music if there was some kind of mass environmental catastrophe. Shes lost touch with that lone wolf girl she once cherished, she says. Im not able to be that strong. While perhaps older generations have watched and intellectualised the incremental deterioration of the environment, some of Joness generation is growing up with hopelessness ingrained in their psyche. When I was in high school, I didnt really think any further beyond that, and I was just focused on the immediate things I had to do to succeed, Jones tells Guardian Australia. Then I started to feel more jaded since finishing high school. Thats why I was so feeling so hopeless about everything after putting my album out. After global public interest in Extinction Rebellion and the school strike movement, Jones says that many people, upon seeing The Weather Diaries, make the assumption that she is more of an activist than she is. Its interesting that people have gotten that from the film, because I think more than anything my mum was trying to show that people my age are so focused on their own lives that its hard to think about the future and climate change, she says. Its sad to realise that, but its not like I have any activist friends either. Were leftist and we understand the reality of whats happening, but its hard to know what to do. I think my generation is just inherently nihilistic. Thats the way that its affecting us. The Weather Diaries premieres on 10 June as part of the all-digital on-demand program of Sydney film festival , which runs until 21 June