Bravery takes many forms, but this is a new one - a tower made from chainsaws.
Given the danger inherent in a motorised cutting machine, it might be expected that the bravery involved was in the stacking.
But not in documentary maker Karl Malakunas’ film Delikado. In his film, the danger is people with guns.
The tower stands in the front yard of an NGO office run by charismatic Filipino lawyer and environmental activist Bobby Chan, and as high as it is, it represents just a fraction of the machinery he has confiscated in an effort to protect the rainforests on Palawan, in the Philippines.
When the documentary was made he had about 700, their long chain-bars blunted, among other trophies, including boats and trucks. He and his fellow Palawan NGO Network Inc (PNNI) land defenders confiscate the equipment from illegal loggers and fishers in an effort to preserve the island’s still relatively untouched environment, and in so doing put themselves in the sights.
"There has been a long history of environmental campaigners being killed in Palawan, as in the rest of the Philippines," Malakunas, an Australian documentary maker and journalist, says over the phone during a visit to his home country.
"The Philippines is one of the deadliest countries in the world to be a land defender, environmental campaigner - but also a journalist, human rights activist, or even a member of the judiciary - anyone who stands up to authority faces death threats."
The PNNI has faced more than death threats. It has had 13 of its people murdered going back over a decade. And that’s just one organisation, in one part of the Philippines.
Globally, campaigning organisation Global Witness has recorded more than four killings of land defenders on average every week since the 2015 Paris climate accords.
That dreadful reality made headlines this past week, by a familiar path, the fact of a Westerner appearing to have become caught up in the slaughter.
British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira are missing in the Amazon, evidence pointing to their probable murders, where they were researching a book on how to save the rainforests there.
Malakunas too has experienced the risks confronting journalists doing his sort of work, but brushes it off in comparison with the dangers faced by local activists.
The Australian stumbled across the life and death struggle playing out in a part of Southeast Asia best known as a burgeoning ecotourism destination, while Agence France-Presse (AFP) bureau chief in Manila, the Philippines capital.
At the time the remote province of Palawan tended to be described in florid prose for its beauty, celebrated as the last frontier and home to the last great rainforests.
"So while I was Manila bureau chief I thought I would go down and do a story on ecotourism - foremost an excuse to get down there and have a look around.
"Then the environmental campaigner I was in communication with was shot in the head and killed just before I was due to go down."
He had been campaigning to expose corruption at the highest levels in a big offshore gas project. The then governor of Palawan ended up being charged with his murder and fled the country, but was soon enough back in the Philippines and running for election again, Malakunas notes.
It’s a brazen example of the culture of impunity that lies at the heart of Delikado.
But Malakunas couldn’t let it go.
"I went down to investigate his murder and while I was there I discovered this whole network of campaigners doing these extraordinary things. There was a real culture of fear, a culture of impunity and big grassroots networks, incredibly brave campaigners doing a whole diverse array of things.
There was also a sign, "stop illegal logging". Malakunas asked him what that was all about and the stories began.
They involved small teams of unarmed men in t-shirts and flip-flops, "para-enforcers", going into the otherwise lawless forest to use citizen’s arrest powers to confiscate unlicensed chainsaws from unauthorised loggers — loggers with armed guards.
"While everyone else in the province is very afraid to stand up to authorities he was putting these chainsaws up to try to tell people — it was a signal — don’t be afraid, if we all work together we can be stronger."
As Chan, PNNI executive director, says himself in the film, someone had to stand up.
"The reason why we created para-enforcers, it is to create a deterrent against illegal logging and illegal fishing in the province because 10 years ago there was absolutely no fear by the violators to log or to fish illegally," he says.
As Chan describes it, behind Palawan’s tourist facade, the place is eating itself up, as a frenzied influx of investors look for a slice of the action.
His right-hand man, Tata Balladares, puts it in even more stark terms: "Our struggle to protect the environment here in Palawan is actually a war for us. We have so many enemies."
"They are defending their communities. It is a matter of survival for them," Malakunas says. "It is such desperate stakes. If the forests are destroyed it leads to the flooding, it leads to the silt washing down into the farmlands and then on to the corals and destroying their fisheries. If all the illegal fishing happens, they lose their fish stocks. So it is not an esoteric kind of environmental campaign for them, it is a matter of survival.
"They all know if they don’t defend their land and their environment it is just going to turn into another Manilla."
That’s a grim fate. Drone footage shows the capital city as chaotic, polluted, denuded of nature, its waste-washed shorelines giving way to slums.
From the distance of geography and culture, the Philippines can be hard to fathom, a country that has lurched from the Marcos dictatorship, via fledgling experiments in democracy to the murderous Duterte regime and, most recently, back to another member of the Marcos family.
But its current problems and the culture of impunity that facilitates them predate this modern history, becoming established during four centuries of Spanish rule, then half a century of direct US control.
During those years, a small number of powerful families, clans and dynasties assumed power, a pattern that has continued, surviving the first Marcos regime.
So, for example, the sitting governor of Palawan had a logging concession on the island under the Marcos dictatorship.
When Malakunas began filming his documentary in earnest in 2017, his introduction to the forest came in a rush.
"I hadn’t met Tata, I hadn’t met anyone else. I was there on a Friday night and Bobby said ‘If you are serious about this, the boys are leaving tonight, get in the van with them’. So, I got in the van with these guys and we started driving and drove through the night ..."
They then hiked through another night.
"I didn’t know any of these people at all."
It is deep in the forest where much of the action plays out. The small para-enforcer patrol creeps up on illegal loggers, their approach covered by the roar of the chainsaw. Then, when the cutting stops, they freeze, in something like a deadly game of "What’s the time Mr Wolf".
On that first foray, Malakunas spent a couple of days with them, and filmed a couple of chainsaw confiscations. He would spend a lot more time out in the forest on subsequent missions, among other things documenting Balladares’ singular and fearless leadership.
"I saw this guy out the front leading everyone and he had such authority and he had the respect of the rest of the group," Malakunas says.
"Their tactics are just amazing. When the chainsaws are running, that’s when they move. When the chainsaws stop, they stop and they crouch and they wait, because if they move in the quiet of the rainforest they might give away their location."
But the action is not restricted to the rainforest.
Malakunas also follows the campaign for re-election of El Nido mayor Nieves Rosento. It’s a bruising expose.
"Yeah, it’s brutal politics, absolutely brutal. This culture of impunity and corruption extends from the highest levels of national politics right down into the village politics."
Rosento is up against the woman she replaced, who has help from the very top.
This is the unique perspective his film provides, Malakunas says, a window on the way former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs became a tool of establishment interests.
"I think some people believe it was a misguided attempt to eradicate drugs and that the intent was genuine to eradicate drugs," Malakunas says. "But I think what we show in the film is that the drug war was used as a tool, as a weapon, by the president’s allies to control the levers of the economy right down to the grassroots level, right down to the village level. We have shown that with Nieves."
Delikado shows Duterte addressing the nation on television, ostensibly about to release names from a list of narcotics traffickers — among whom he includes Rosento. At that point, her campaign is all but over.
"What we have shown with Nieves is one small part of a very massive system," Malakunas says.
The documentary could easily have painted a portrait of undiluted pessimism, except for one factor.
"What we have shown in our film is that there are people there who are going to continue to fight, are willing to put their lives on the line for this fight, whether it is democracy, whether it is good governance, whether it is protecting their environment, whether it is fighting corruption. They are not giving up and there are lots of them out there," Malakunas insists.
Even though the odds seem stacked against them, they are not giving up.
And there are reasons beyond philanthropy for supporting their struggle, he says.
Palawan’s rainforests are a significant part of the lungs of the planet, their survival vital in terms of efforts to preserve a liveable planet.
"These land defenders are on the frontline of our battle to contain climate change," Malakunas says.
They stand between us and extinction.
"Really the people in Palawan have to win their battles for us to win our battle to contain climate change. Land defenders all across the world have to be supported to protect their natural resources, because we all depend on that."
Beyond financially supporting the PNNI, there are other things Westerners can do, he says.
Lots of tourists will head back to Palawan now borders are reopening, staying at resorts.
Malakunas suggests a little homework first.
"We would like to encourage responsible tourism, so people make conscious decisions," he says.
"The most beautiful place and the best part of the beach may actually be owned by unsavoury interests who have used illegal logging."
Streaming
• Delikado streams as part of the doc edge film festival from tomorrow until July 10.
• docedge.nz/
