The Felling is a new documentary that tells the first-hand account of how ordinary Sheffield citizens stood up against a company waging war on the environment...
Director: Eve Wood
Running time: 117 minutes
If a tree falls in a city but no one is listening to it hit the ground, has it made a sound? In the fine city of Sheffield, we’ll never find out the answer to that conundrum.
For in this proud South Yorkshire land where a seemingly out of its depth, not to mention broke, Sheffield City Council (SCC) did a deal with the devil — as this documentary would have it — in multinational company Amey, residents fought back against the flagrant destruction of its famous urban canopy. New documentary The Felling, from director Eve Wood, tells this proper David and Goliath tale.
If you’ve ever visited Sheffield, it’s hard to miss the trees. They’re not dissimilar in scale and sheer beauty to those found along Nottingham’s (Gregory, Lenton, Castle) boulevards and Derby Road, but they’re arguably more densely packed, hugging the historic houses and the narrower streets. Which might be why, when they started being taken down seemingly without cause, the residents stood up and noticed.
The turmoil began in 2012 when SCC entered into a 25 year private finance initiative (PFI) contract called ‘Streets Ahead’ worth £2.2bn, with the Spanish owned infrastructure services conglomerate to maintain its highways. Protests began in earnest in 2014, leading to numerous arrests.
Now you and me might think highway maintenance mainly consisted of filling pot holes, resurfacing highways, and generally making sure the ground was relatively safe to walk, cycle and drive on. But as the documentary shows us, it also gave them an apparently free reign over the trees that line them too. And if you’re in charge of maintaining trees and all about making money, then it’s much cheaper to basically get rid of any pesky trees early, rather than having to keep them in check. That is, if no-one’s paying attention.
All the best stories get a happy ending, and it’s heartening to see that even a monstrous corporation like Amey working under an official contract worth billions can actually be stopped.
Of course Amey claimed that the trees were diseased, posing a risk, or somehow getting in the way of their resurfacing teams — claims that were routinely shown to be without merit. Here, with no shortage of cinematic skill, they’re convincingly depicted as the baddies of the piece alongside seemingly feckless SCC councillors.
The good guys in this tale, painted with overwhelming determination and good humour, are Sheffield Tree Action Group (STAG) whose video diaries of their efforts to halt the chop form the basis of the visual material here.
Wood does a fantastic job of weaving a narrative out of what must have been an incredibly large and often complicated web of evidence; at once humanising and — let’s face it — demonising characters herein in such a way as to ensure the audience is totally gripped by the unfolding drama.
All the best stories get a happy ending, and it’s heartening to see that even a monstrous corporation like Amey working under an official contract worth billions can actually be stopped. Sheffield Street Tree Partnership, which includes STAG and other wildlife interest groups, now has a fleshed out plan including proper consultation and community representation about any trees due for felling.
And all the best environmental action films lead to action. I was so inspired by the film I actually set up our own “Notts TAG (Nottinghamshire Tree Action Group)” on Facebook before the credits had even rolled. Which I then proceeded to shout out to the audience after the film was done — made a bit less weird by the fact the Director and a Woodland Trust representative were also speaking at the event.
The film is due to roll back round in March, so keep an eye out for a showing, and join us in defending Nottingham’s trees. We’re regularly losing irreplaceable mature trees here too, and it’s time those of us who care followed STAG’s lead, get angry, and demand accountability.
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