At the third film screening of the VISIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY climate protection series, a survey was carried out on the reception of Damon Gameau’s documentary 2040 – Join the Regeneration. Here we present the first results from the questionnaires.
I. THE FILM
Damon Gameau | 2019 | 92 mins | Australia | OmdU
What might our future look like in 2040? How can we leave a world worth living in for future generations, limit CO2 emissions and what can we do about climate change?
In his film 2040, filmmaker Damon Gameau embarks on a journey around the world in search of answers to these pressing questions. And he finds numerous approaches and solutions.
II. DATA COLLECTION
2040 was shown on December 10th, 2024 at the Harmonie Kino Freiburg. As with the previous two screenings in the climate protection film series, the approximately 100 viewers had the choice between an online and a paper questionnaire. This time the focus was on assessing hope and a willingness to act in light of the solutions presented to the challenges of climate change. The questionnaire consisted of three parts: The first part was completed shortly before the film screening, the second part was answered immediately after the film. The third part of the questionnaire followed a subsequent panel discussion with Pia Laborgne and Dr. Volker Stelzer from the ICN project “Innovation Communities” about solution-oriented projects in Freiburg. All questionnaires were available only in German during data collection; the questions have been translated into English.
III. THE FIRST RESEARCH RESULTS
Here is an insight into the first, descriptive evaluation of the questionnaire: The so-called “n” stands for the number of people who answered the question. An “n=60” means that 60 viewers submitted an answer.
What was particularly interesting for our research was whether this solution-oriented film would cue hope in our viewers since it is an emotion that filmmaker Damon Gameau deliberately wants to evoke. Our results suggest that he succeeded with our audience. As Figure 1 shows, 90% of those surveyed said that watching 2040 gave them a feeling of “hope”. The second most frequently mentioned feeling was a “drive to action” (68.3%) – this is also a remarkable result for a film that aims to show concrete solutions – followed by a feeling of “connectedness” (60.0 %). In comparison to our results for the films Aufschrei der Jugend and The Magnitude of All Things, which we screened in October and November, it is noticeable that emotions such as “compassion” (28.3%) “frustration” (23.3% ) and powerlessness (15.0%) were mentioned significantly less frequently as a respones to this film.
The emotion of hope was also the focus of the questions about attitudes that were asked before and immediately after the film. Figure 2 shows that after the film screening, agreement with the statement “Hope is an important motivation in the commitment to climate protection” increased.
Agreement with the statement “More hopeful climate protection narratives are needed” (Figure 3) also increased. Even before the film, approval was very high (70.2%). However, after the film screening it increased significantly to over 78%. Since the film deliberately focuses on solutions, hope, and optimism in its depiction of climate protection measures, it can be concluded that it has strengthened some viewers’ attitudes.
Also interesting in this context is viewers’ agreement with the statement “The current approaches to climate protection give me hope”. As Figure 4 shows, we observed a significant shift toward agreement with this statement among our viewers. While before the film screening only 7.4% agreed and 22.2% rather agreed, these values increased to 37.0% and 35.2% after viewing the film.
Whether 2040 also encouraged people to do (even) more for climate protection was answered in the affirmative by the vast majority of our viewers (85.0%) and suggests that the film also has an activating effect, as shown in Figure 5.
As in every film event so far, we wanted to know what viewers took away with them at the end of the evening after the panel discussion. Figure 6 shows that 71.4% were interested in further VISIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY events and 57.1% took away an “impulse to talk about the event”. Approximately 45% of the participants took home a “community spirit” as well as “frustration with politics”. However, it should also be noted that, despite the focus on practical solutions in Freiburg by discussion partners Pia Laborgne and Volker Stelzer, only 19% of the viewers said they had taken away an “idea for implementation/change”.
IV. CONCLUSION
In summary, our first results for Damon Gameau’s film 2040 – Join the Regeneration primarily show that the solution-oriented film triggered feelings of hope and a drive for action in our viewers, and it also had an influence on attitudes towards the role of hope as a motivation in climate protection. Among other things, a clear shift towards more hope with regard to current approaches to climate protection could be observed.
We thank everyone who took part in our survey!
The next step involves an in-depth evaluation of the data collected and the addition of a context analysis. Stay tuned!
VISIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY is an inter- and transdisciplinary research project funded by the Innovation Sustainability Campus (ICN), located at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Non-university cooperation partners include Harmonie Kino, the Volkshochschule Freiburg and Greenmotions. The Freiburg environmental mayor Christine Buchheit has take on the patronage of the project.