.png)
9 hours ago
5 ARTICLE AD
A tall man with a warm smile ambles along rural byways, a backpack over his shoulders and a banjo around his neck, strumming as he strolls through Northern California. He does not speak, communicating with his instrument and a kind of self-created sign language.
This was the unusual sight witnessed by residents of Point Reyes and other towns in the 1970s. The man they eyed bore the name of John Francis and though he proceeded at an unhurried pace, there was purpose to his walk. To a select few, he handed a printout that read, “John gave up the use of motorized vehicles not long after an oil spill in San Francisco Bay in 1972. Since 1973, he has maintained a vow of silence.”
The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Planetwalker, from L.A. Times Short Docs and Bloomberg Green Docs, takes viewers on a journey with Francis, who strode through California and eventually across the United States to “raise environmental consciousness, promote Earth stewardship and world peace.” Filmmaking couple Nadia Gill and Dominic Gill, who have directed many films about the outdoors, first heard about Francis through an article.
“I don’t think it was more than a couple paragraphs on John,” Nadia recalls. “It was some sort of compilation, like ‘10 Black people you should know in the outdoor space…’ So, I was like, I’ll flip through and learn who these people are. And I came across John’s story and I was like, this is amazing… I was impressed and I went to Dom and I said, ‘I think I found our next story.’”
Dominic adds, “I think it wasn’t until actually I sat down in front of John and hung out with John that I realized that he indeed had the voice in every way to bring this story to life.”
Planetwalker uses contemporary news accounts of Francis’s travels, plus the recollections of friends, John’s younger brother, and of John Francis himself – along with evocative animation — to trace his remarkable path. Abandoning the spoken word somehow allowed him to circumvent negative stereotypes projected onto African Americans.
“Silence sort of put him into another frame of mind,” observes Joan Peterson, who met Francis back then. “He didn’t have to prove himself anymore.”
As the film shows, Francis established deep bonds with people just through his radiant presence and hand movements that managed to speak volumes. The documentary explores how he got an undergraduate degree in science, math, and creative writing at a college in Oregon, then his Master’s at the University of Montana – all without speaking. Later, he taught college, again without speaking. In time, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, researching oil spills.
For 17 years, he maintained his silence. It went against his natural inclination.
“I went to a Catholic high school and thought I had a vocation — so funny — as a monk,” he tells Deadline. “They took me to a monastery, and they said, ‘Well, John, these guys, they have this code of silence where they don’t speak.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that wouldn’t work for me, I’m sorry.’ So, I left and said, that’s the end of that vocation. And then 10 years later I find myself walking around California not speaking.”
When he first embarked on his voyage sharing his environmental message, he found himself getting into verbal disputes with some who dismissed his mission.
“I got angry at that, and I would argue with people and [then] I realized that, okay, I’m turning 27, I’m going to do something different. I’m going to not speak for the day. I was reading The Hobbit… and Hobbits give birthday gifts to people — not to themselves. They don’t expect gifts; they give it to their community. And I figured I’m going to give my community the gift of my silence for one day. And, so, I turned 27 and I didn’t speak, and they were so happy,” he jokes. “‘Thank you, John, thank you for this wonderful gift.’”
As time passed, he began to find other benefits to silence.
“I started being in nature and just listening; being around people, just listening; not ready to argue with someone who would say something but appreciating that I could learn if I would just listen and open my mind,” he says. “The first year was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to have to do this another year!’ It was 17 years of walking across America and meeting all kinds of people. But the vehicle of walking and silence allowed me to hear and know things that I wouldn’t have been able to had I continued talking and having the mindset that I knew everything.”
Silence and the revelations it brought expanded his perspective on healing the planet.
“The road was also a teacher and people, they were also teachers. And so I learned from people about how we were all part of the environment,” Francis says. “And if we’re all part of the environment, then how we treat each other is our first chance to do something positive for the environment… It’s like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we’re part of this. We have to treat each other better because as we treat each other, it’s going to manifest in the physical environment around us.”
He continues, “That’s when ‘environment’ became about human rights and gender equality and civil rights and all the ways that we relate to each other. That’s when I decided, ‘Oh, you have to start talking and say that.’”
Planetwalker emerges at a time when discourse between people has broken down and there seems to be no consensus even on matters of fact.
“We have created so much noise around not only this issue [the environment], but so many others that it no longer makes sense,” Dominic observes. “The science can be questioned, but it can’t be; or we need so much scientific proof that it’s impossible to make headway. If we deconstruct everything, we do really only have one original tool. And that is, as John keeps saying, how we treat each other. And it’s really at the bottom of all good science, all progress, all political progress. Realizing the message can be that simple is both counterintuitive to the way I was educated and extremely valuable.”
Planetwalker is streaming on both the L.A. Times website, the Bloomberg News website, and YouTube.
“[It’s] available for free,” notes Nadia, “which we also love because this is the film that we want people to see and lower barriers to entry are important to us.”
Nadia says it has been gratifying to make the Oscar shortlist because “we are coming from left field. We didn’t get on any of the shorts lists [of predictions], like the roundup things. I think people still are learning about our film in real time and how good it is. And so we’re so grateful to finally get to the 15 [finalists] where everybody actually has to go out and view the film. And we hope that the film can stand on its merits.”
Adds Dominic, “It’s really lovely to feel like this film is getting recognized not only for its caliber as a film, but because people are recognizing this message is critical.”
