David v Goliath: how self-funded eco documentaries are taking the fight to the masses

The activist film-makers behind Our Power and The Bentley Effect struggled for funding but hope to unite communities

It looks like something out of a Hollywood disaster movie. A blanket of smouldering fire stretches across hundreds of hectares, the landscape burning red and blood orange, showering acrid ash and smoke onto surrounding towns. This is what happens when a bushfire combines with a coal mine.

Or maybe the Hazelwood open cut mine fire looked worse than a disaster movie - like a vision of Dante's Inferno. In early 2014 the fire burned in Victoria's Latrobe Valley for 45 days. This event is unpacked in unsettling detail - including the horrible health repercussions inflicted on the populace - in a new documentary, Our Power, from Melbourne film-maker Peter Yacono.