KOCHI: Amidst the din of doom and gloom narratives that usually dominate works on climate change, Shawn Sebastian’s projects offer an oasis of quiet. The root of the problem that imperils today’s communities is not the only mainstay in this Kochi-based documentary filmmaker’s focus. Instead, it also encapsulates the collective solutions that people arrive at.

It is perhaps this — a proclivity to highlight the positive; the human aspect of the issue — that won his firm, Drokpa Films, the Climate Change Communication Award (Rebecca Ballestra) in 2023. He won the prestigious award for Faces of Climate Resilience, a 16-part short documentary series he did for CEEW.

TNIE caught up with the filmmaker for a short interview. Excerpts:

How did you get into documentary filmmaking?

I have always been interested in storytelling, and documentaries have allowed me, who is not a trained filmmaker, to learn the craft on the go. I also found the medium to be very exciting, in the sense that I could explore the stories I was pursuing in depth.

Initially, the videos I made complimented my journalism work. In time, I became fully engrossed in it. I would say the turning point came in 2014 when I was working on the Radio Woman of Patara. This project was my first and it went on to win a couple of awards.

Beyond the awards and the recognition, what about this project stood out?

Well, the short film was about a tribal woman in Madhya Pradesh who turned a community radio as a tool of empowerment. I liked the participatory nature of the filmmaking we employed. We stayed with the community for a couple of days and saw the story shaping up organically.

I knew then that I could do this. That I enjoyed it. This rural kind of filmmaking. I also knew that these were stories that mainstream media missed. So that was another impetus to do them.

Community is a central theme in your works..

I’d like to say so. If you look at my other works, you’ll see that they too are in the same vein. If Finding the Light Within (2015) was about how young women in the villagers of Uttar Pradesh were organising themselves to fight injustice and inequality, In the Shade of Fallen Chinar (2016) showcased how students of Kashmir University ‘protested’ with art and music, and not with violence as it often portrayed.