Undermine (2017-2021)

Feature length artistic documentary (Currently in post-production)

Something violent is occurring beneath their feet. The subsurface is fractured. A fracking site is constructed, and alongside it, a group of ordinary women become a community of activists. 

Undermine records the experiences of a community campaigning against fracking in Lancashire, UK. It is made with the cooperation of the community of local protectors, many of them middle-aged women, who are engaging in political action for the first time in their lives. The film explores the phenomenon of this generally overlooked demographic of older women finding their political voices, as their daily lives become destabilised. Following these women over three years of protest, at the roadside outside the fracking site, and in their domestic lives, the film investigates the psychological implications of being undermined, environmentally, democratically and emotionally.

Undermine is not a protest film, it is a film about our relationship to the ground that we walk on, the land that we live upon, and how, when the stability of this physical, emotional and political bedrock is threatened, the routines of our daily lives begin to unravel.

Undermine Production Stills: photo Emma Dalesman; Rebecca Birch

Warm thanks and admiration to Miranda Cox, Bobby Black, Janette Allison, Carole Wilson, Tina Rothery, Julie Daniels, Kitty Bouman and all others at Preston New Road

Supported by: Arts Council England (R&D award 2017), Lancaster Arts and Film London Artists' Moving Image (FLAMIN New Approaches 2016-17)