Documentary Filmmaking on Social and Environmental Justice
Chaya Brennan Agarwal is a documentary filmmaker committed to exploring topics of social and environmental justice through film. Her films delve into the impacts of ecological exploitation on proximate and vulnerable communities and highlight the need for corporations to respect the agency and demands of community leaders and activists.
Agua es vida // Water is Life
2023
Agua es vida is an environmental documentary that centers on the diverse opinions and perspectives of an Indigenous Mapuche community in Neltume, Chile, regarding a proposed hydroelectric plant and its potential impacts on their community and the surrounding environment and ecosystem. In a series of interviews, community members discuss their relationship with the land and respect for its resources, how the hydroelectric plant threatened the natural environment of the lake which the community considers sacred, whether hydroelectricity was cleaner than alternative options, and divisions within the community. Several members illuminate how Endesa-Enel, the Spanish-Italian multinational electric utility company proposing the hydroelectric plant, interacted with the community in ways that were often manipulative and exploitative.
In the film, Noemi Catrilaf describes an annual ritual called The Ancestral Navigation that was born out of this conflict with Endesa and carried out in defense of Mapuche territory. Ultimately, the film emphasizes the Mapuche cosmology of ancestral connection between communities and the land as well as caring for the environment for future generations. The interviews reveal how community members differently engage their cosmology within the reality that demands for electricity are constantly growing and many Mapuche communities are impoverished due to the Chilean occupation of Mapuche lands.
The Fight Against the Wood Pellet Industry
2022
Chaya produced The Fight Against the Wood Pellet Industry as her final project for her internship with Dogwood Alliance, an environmental nonprofit organization committed to addressing the health and management of southern US forests and their surrounding communities. She filmed and interviewed community partners and edited footage to feature the story of a primarily Black and low-income community harmed by the pollution of a proximate wood pellet facility and their ongoing resistance to the exploitative actions of this corporation. In the following year, this experience contextualized her work with the Nicholas School of the Environment, researching environmental justice communities affected by the biomass industry in North Carolina.
BIO
Chaya Brennan Agarwal is a documentary filmmaker dedicated to exploring topics of social and environmental justice through film. With a background in documentary studies and a passion for amplifying stories, Chaya uses film as a tool for education, advocacy, and uplifting underrepresented voices.
Chaya graduated from Duke University in 2023 with degrees in International Comparative Studies and Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies, as well as a certificate in Documentary Studies. She has been passionate about environmental justice for many years and has pursued this through interning with nonprofits, engaging with environmental education initiatives, and working as a research fellow at the Nicholas School of the Environment. Chaya is very creatively oriented, enjoys in art forms such as photography and painting, and is deeply invested in pursuing documentary work.
