Filmmaker Cathy Henkel wins Stanley Hawes Award

Since her documentary Heroes of Our Time aired in 1991, she has made 10 long-form and more than 100 short-form films, each focusing on environmental and social justice issues. Other titles include The Burning Season, The Man Who Stole My Mother's Face and Laura's Choice.

She received the Stanley Hawes Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the Australian documentary and factual sector at the Australian International Documentary Conference in Melbourne on March 8, 2023.

Heroes Of Our Time, co-produced with fellow filmmaker Catherine Marciniak, followed Greenpeace Australia behind the scenes as they exposed how Caltex was dumping waste into the ocean.

"We had too much fun going to all these clandestine meetings, and watching all the undercover operations, and all the preparation, and then getting up at 4am to go out on Sydney Harbour, filming off the boats and watching the whole drama unfold on the day," she said.

"I could see as it was unfolding that this is a great story and we're getting to see activists in action, putting their lives at risk to save the environment. That got into me."

Caltex tried to stop the film, which became a legal battle between the oil company and the ABC's lawyers, but it did go to air with a disclaimer citing Caltex disputing exactly how much toxic matter it was putting into the ocean.

"Not long after that, Caltex stopped pumping their toxic waste into the ocean. So it was a big win for Greenpeace, for the ABC, for the environment," Cathy said.

But it was a comment that then-Greenpeace chief executive officer Paul Gilding made that inspired Cathy to make the films she does.

"(He said) 'We have to change the way we do things on planet Earth.' It's a sentence that went into my body and right down through my being. What can I do to help that happen? That's a big task, and I dedicated myself from there on that I would use the tools of filmmaking to help that quest," she said.

She met her future husband and collaborator, Jeff Canin, during this time with Greenpeace, as he was a sea turtle campaigner at the time. Together they founded Hatchling Productions, focusing on documenting social issues and community.

Cathy's self-directed films The Burning Season (2008) and Rise of the Eco-Warriors (2014) looked at Indonesia's expanding palm oil plantations and their social and environmental impacts. Inspired by the depiction of climate change in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (2006), she wanted to find an issue closer to home to highlight.

"I looked in my backyard and I saw these big smoke plumes coming out of Southeast Asia and thought, 'Well, that can't be good for the climate. What's going on? Oh, they're burning the forest to clear it for palm oil. Oh, what's palm oil? We need to find out about that.'

She learned corporations were clearing forests in Borneo and Sumatra in Indonesia to plant palm oil. The Burning Season followed a young entrepreneur, Dorjee Sun, attempting a carbon trading solution. But it also allowed her to meet orangutans, local foresters, and the people of Indonesia. This led to The Rise of the Eco-Warriors, where 15 young people were taken to Borneo to see what they could do on the ground in 100 days to help protect the forest. Through that film, an orangutan rescue centre and a school were built in a remote part of Borneo.

"This village of Tembak has become a pillar of light in the middle of Borneo resisting palm oil and pioneering alternatives. I couldn't be more proud of that film and its grassroots action," Cathy said.

Closer to her heart, she made two films about her mum, Laura Henkel. The Man Who Stole My Mother's Face traced Cathy's search for justice for Laura as she tracked down the man who raped and bashed her almost to death and was never held to account. After the attack, Laura lived as a hermit for 10 years because she never got any justice.

"I just said, 'Would it help if I went back to South Africa, found him, and got some justice for you?' And she said, Yes'," Cathy said.

"It became a story about victim-blaming and understanding the grief that a person goes through after an event like that, when the family and the neighbours in the community find a way to somehow blame them and make it their fault, like, 'Why did you do this?' 'Why did you wear that?' Why did you...' - those are blame questions."

Her film Laura's Choice, looks at her mother's journey through choosing to end her life on her own terms. "She navigated her death in a way that's really inspiring, and I'm so full of admiration for what she did. That film is my mum's legacy," Cathy said.

"I'm really proud of that film. People still contact me all the time and say that it really affected them. It's a very personal and universal film that's not going to age."

Cathy is Director of the WA Screen Academy at Edith Cowan University and works particularly closely with postgraduate students who may be considering their purpose in life as well as how use filmmaking tools to tell a story.

"Filmmaking is one of the most engaging and emotionally connecting forms of communication that we have in this time," she said.

"Film is a powerful medium. It can be useful, but can also have some pretty awful outcomes, so I try to guide them to use these tools to tell stories that will have a positive impact. Yes, we teach the skills, techniques and the craft, but it's also about the stories. Whose story? What story? Why this story? Why should you tell it? Why are you telling this now?"

She concedes the technology today is far more agile and capable than the equipment she had when she started.

"When I started out, we were shooting on 16mm film, and had the old Steinbeck editing systems, and clunky analog editing systems, which really no one other than nostalgic collectors miss, because they were really inaccurate and troublesome tools," she said.

But Cathy also remembers a world that was seemingly less complicated and optimistic, and people were less stressed.

"I think my students and this current generation understandably have a really bleak view of what lies ahead. There are so many problems - climate change being obviously a big one - but all kinds of other social and global issues. So I think there's a sense that they're pulling through a lot more difficult terrain emotionally, and a lot of them are suffering from the mental anguish of that," she said.

"If you're a thinker, you're going to be anguished. So I feel for them, and I see my role as trying to turn that anguish into action. If we keep taking one action at a time, we can get through this and actually be making a difference, and we won't get sucked into what could be a very depressing view of the world. So I hope I can inspire them to pick up these very powerful tools of filmmaking, and do something useful with them, and help to steer us to a better path."

Laura's Choice can still be watched on ABC iView here.