‘His voice is important for the world’
Director Larry Keating tells Troels Sommerville how filming a Blake doco uncovered an Amazon rife with violence.
The rain had been pouring down all day in Paris when film director Larry Keating got into a taxi and found the driver crying while listening intently to a radio news bulletin.
With his minimal French, Keating managed to piece together that New Zealand sailing great Sir Peter Blake had died – shot on the Amazon River. On the news that night the story was the top of every news hour. It was on Canal+, BBC, ESPN and CNN. There was no escaping it.
But that was nearly 20 years ago and today many younger Kiwis don’t even know who Blake was, let alone anything of his tireless work in protecting the environment – the work that eventually cost him his life.
That’s part of the reason why Keating has spent the better part of the past five years putting together his new documentary The Garden of Evil.
Through it, he hopes to shine a light on Blake’s legacy, while also scratching an itch to find out more about what happened to the veteran yachtsman on December 5, 2001 when he was gunned down aboard his boat, the Seamaster.
After winning the America’s Cup in 1995 and conquering the round-the-world yachting scene, Blake had set sail for new horizons.
His passion for the environment led him to the Amazon, where he was acting as a special envoy for the United Nations at the time of his death.
‘‘There’s a generation that don’t even know him, the environmental side of his legacy sort of died with him, and I think this will sort of revive that,’’ Keating said.
‘‘His voice is very important for the world.’’
The urge to make a film highlighting Blake’s legacy and the plight of the Amazon had been bubbling away for more than a decade, but it was a 2017 interview with Blake’s killer Ricardo Tavares for the Sunday-Star Times that spurred him into action.
Investigative reporter Sam Cowie had met Tavares in the Brazilian prison in which he had spent the previous 16 years since he had shot Blake aboard the Seamaster. Tavares told Cowie he regretted what he had done and apologised, but also said there was more to his story that he couldn’t reveal. ‘‘Lots of things happened at that time that weren’t taken into account and weren’t allowed to be said, I didn’t get the chance,’’ Tavares said.
The interview Keating’s interest so he assembled a film crew, including Cowie who lives in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and went back to the scene of the crime.
What he found was a bigger story than just the death of Blake. One telling of the violent struggle facing environmentalists and piqued land rights campaigners in the Amazon.
The area has become a dangerous place, with dozens of environmental crusaders killed there in recent years.
In 2019, 212 people were killed worldwide for defending their land and the environment, according to research from independent watchdog Global Witness.
Of the 24 killings that happened in Brazil, more than 90 per cent were in the Amazon.
But it’s believed that’s only a fraction of the actual number of eco-activists – including indigenous tribes – who face violence every day in the region, as illegal logging and mining continues to lay waste to the forests.
Keating’s crew witnessed the
violence firsthand, when a group of men drove past and fired bullets into a crowd, leaving bodies in the street only feet away from them.
‘‘You know that beneath the Amazon’s canopy of beauty lurk some very dangerous people,’’ he said.
‘‘I think the film is really about why the Amazon is under such great threat.
‘‘It’s not just about the senseless killing of Peter Blake or the near-death attack on Pete Bethune, they’re merely the dressing on a far more important story.’’
The Garden of Evil will have its world premiere at DocEdge on June 12 at The Civic in Auckland, and will screen at The Roxy in Wellington on June 26.