Driving to South Surrey, Sending 7 emails to the Ukrainian armed forces, sending 3 emails to the Canadian army, painting miniatures in class, and finally, getting an interview with a naval history expert. 

This project didn’t start like that though. It started with a movie. James Cameron’s 2009 hit “Avatar”, which was all good, other than the fact that the movie (and its eventual sequel) was pretty average. In fact, I think that one of the only reasons the sequel made money was because of nostalgia from 2009.

Anyways. After the movie we went into groups to find themes from the movie, one of the themes my group landed on was MILITARISM, which i immediately chose as my theme for my project. If you know me, this isn’t a surprise.

Our project was to make a video with an interview and interesting B-Roll, and so I thought, who better to interview than the Ukrainian Navy (Totally remembering they were a little bit busy…), but yet here I am a while later, and I still have no response.

So I sent an email to the Canadian Army, but by the end of school for winter break, I hadn’t heard back from them, eventually, they staid they had nobody who would be suitable for the type of interview I wanted to conduct. 

So finally, I turned to my final option, a friend of mine by the name of Edward “Ed” Beauregard, a fellow naval history enjoyer, he accepted, and after meeting him at a tabletop games society meeting, we scheduled the interview for the Sunday of that weekend. The only problem is that he lives in South Surrey, undeterred we (Myself and my mother) drove out to surrey for what would be a deep and thought provoking interview, which was 26 minutes long, longer than the 3-5 minute requirement for our project, so I got to editing, eventually only including the first 2 questions, and after stealing some B-roll of military parades, my video was done.

Enjoy it right here.

Anyways, then came the exhibition. Because there is ALWAYS an exhibition. I was with the militarism group, the group with the people with precisely zero knowledge of war fighting, zero knowledge of logistics, and zero knowledge of MILITARISM (Not the Military, but militarism as the concept). So I got to work, working with Cameron B. we made a plan, then executed it somewhat well, we decorated our room with black paper, camo netting, and everything else a war zone might contain. I decided to wear an admiral’s uniform, to show my superior rank to the world.

The day after we did reflections, and I, in my great genius, forgot my iPad…

But I wrote this in a sheet of paper:

The military, a naturally aggressive organization under the pretence of Defence, is naturally a material-hungry entity that thirsts for power like a man lost in a desert thirsts for water, even overthrowing governments to obtain it.

The corporation destroys the land for materials and profits, not caring about who it impacts, these impacts lead to more destruction, more displacement, and eventually the overuse of the land, destroying the civilizations there.

The government pretends to seek the betterment of its people, but in the shadows it seeks power, power over People, power over others, and power over nature.

That is what I think the world of “Avatar” shows about our society