Robin Lindley interviews award-winning Seattle-based filmmaker John de Graaf on his new documentary on the life and legacy of perhaps our greatest environmentalist, Stewart Udall.
It isn’t every day that a federal bureaucrat gets featured in a film half a century after his service in the nation’s capital and more than a decade after his death. But filmmaker John de Graaf felt that Stewart Udall’s story needed to be heard by a new generation.
Can beauty save the world, as Dostoevsky imagined? Is it the best bet to do so, As Doug Tompkins wagered? In an ugly time, is it the truest of protests, as Phil Ochs declared? I can only say that it has transformed me and that its ability to change cynicism to reverence and to make people happier, healthier and kinder is well-documented.
John de Graaf is currently directing a new film about America’s champion of beauty in public policy. Stewart Udall was Secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. As such, he was the lead advocate for many of the most important environmental laws we now take for granted.
