Young Filmmaker Contest winner Nathan Goswick
By Cassandra West
A trip to Chicago to accept his first-place award in the One Earth Film Festival’s Young Filmmakers Contest brought Nathan Goswick more than he expected. The 17-year old’s high school level winning entry, “Plastic Bags,” captured the attention of Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, a nonprofit that presses corporations on sustainability.
With As You Sow about to release a new report that looks at 50 companies’ plastic waste, Behar had an idea. Why not hire Goswick to “interpret our report to his peers, then maybe we can have an impact on this next generation who will inherit the planet,” Behar says. A few weeks later, after discussing the idea with his team back in California, Behar and Goswick had a phone conversation. Behar told Goswick that As You Sow wanted him to make several videos around the report.
“They said that I was going to be the spokesperson, and I could approach [the videos] anyway that I would like,” Goswick says in a phone interview from his home in Loma Linda, Mo. Suffice it to say, Goswick is thrilled by the opportunity to put his creative talents to work for an organization that he said “really does make change.”
Sue Crothers, Young Filmmakers Contest Founding Director
A dream realized
Seeing young people like Goswick become changemakers themselves is a dream come true for Sue Crothers, founding director and co-chair of the Young Filmmakers Contest.
“Our goal is to be more than a contest,” Crothers says. “We want to be the vehicle for these students to launch themselves into activism and in some cases careers that will work to heal our planet.”
The One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest (YFC) started in 2013, during One Earth Film Festival’s second year.
“The idea came from a strong belief that the voice of youth is crucial when it comes to addressing climate change because they are next generation of great thinkers, activists and world leaders,” Crothers says. “The future of the planet is theirs to inherit and therefore their voices matter. Societal change is more often than not lead by youth; they educate the generations before them and bring new ideas to solve old problems, and with these new ideas, they also bring hope. There is no better way to offer them a platform where they can also share their concerns, to shout their frustrations or to give us hope than through film.”
This year, YFC received 196 submissions from across the country including Hawaii. Goswick won for his short film, “Plastic Bags.” He received a $350 prize plus a matching $350 grant that he donated to Plastic Oceans, a group that fights plastic pollution.
It is because of Crothers’ staunch support of YFC and One Earth that Behar and Goswick had a chance to meet. In Chicago for OEFF’s early March opening weekend, Behar was an invited guest of Crothers and her husband, Bill Gee.
Making connections
During a Sunday morning breakfast for filmmakers hosted by the couple, Goswick and Behar struck up a conversation about the power of film to tell a story.
Behar “started asking about my film,” Goswick recalls. “His questions were different from everybody else’s. He wanted to talk about the ideas behind the film.” Admitting that part of his goal while in town for the festival “was to do a bit of networking,” the savvy young filmmaker made sure to get Behar’s contact. And Behar told Goswick that he was going to show “Plastic Bags” to his co-workers back in Berkeley, where As You Sow is based.
A leader in advocacy
Founded in 1992, As You Sow is a national leader in shareholder advocacy. It is committed to promoting environmental and corporate social responsibility through shareholder advocacy and coalition building, and envisions “a safe, just, and sustainable world in which protecting the environment and human rights is central to corporate decision making.”
Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, at an OEFF screening in March 2020.
Behar explained: “In particular, we focus on ocean plastics engaging company senior management to change their policies and practices. This has led to Unilever cutting 100,000 tons of plastics from their packaging; YUM! Brands joining McDonald’s and Dunkin’ with commitments to stop using Styrofoam that means 3 billion foam cups will not be produced every year; Starbucks recycling and ending use of plastic straws. And on.”
While impressed with Goswick’s film, Behar saw an opportunity for As You Sow to reach a new audience. “Generally, As You Sow focuses our media and PR outreach on investors and corporate media. We have never reached out to Nathan’s generation,” Behar says.
Birth of a filmmaker
A high school junior, Goswick has lived on the same street his whole life in Loma Linda, Mo., population about 840. He describes it as “mainly an older-people neighborhood in a very small village wrapped around a golf course.” He attends the Joplin High School, which, after a devastating tornado hit the town several years ago received “an absurd amount of money that allowed it to afford fantastic equipment” for its film department. And that “was instrumental in teaching me film,” Goswick explains.
He learned about YFC from him mom, who came across the contest on Facebook while helping Goswick look for film competitions he could enter. But he had to work fast because the deadline was in less than a week away.
It took him five days to make “Plastic Bags,” he says. “I worked on it for 36 hours straight, without sleeping. It absolutely took over my whole being.” And it is one of his proudest filmmaking accomplishments, exceeding in quality the 30-minute documentary, “Chihuahua, Mexico,” he completed last year. “I got 10 times better in over a year.”
While school is closed because of the pandemic, he’s at work now on the script for a full-length film. “Since I’m cooped up in my home, the only thing I can really do is write.”
He describes the film, to be titled “Pokeberries,” as a character study about how people deal with trauma. He’s also reading the noted screenwriting lecturer Robert McKee’s book “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting.”
Goswick sees a lot more filmmaking in his future. He wants to one day be a director. “I want to be involved with every single part of the [filmmaking] process,” he says. His goal is to attend Flashpoint Chicago, a media arts college that his older brother also attended.
An opportunity knocks
In the meantime, he’s ready to tackle the “amazing opportunity” with As You Sow. “I’m very grateful to One Earth Film Festival. Without how they structured it, where I could network and mingle with people actually in the industry, I would not have this opportunity whatsoever.”
YFC founder Crothers would not want it any other way.
“Our goal is to continue to empower [young people] way beyond the parameters of the contest,” she says. “Collaborations such as with AYS and Nathan offer them the opportunity to be leaders in the work of healing our planet.”