Tree-huggers rejoice: New documentary celebrates the majesty of the coast redwood

You are probably taking them for granted right now. Of course, I am, too. 

If you live in Santa Cruz County, you are a short drive or bicycle ride — the lucky few even a short walk — away from a personal encounter with Sequoia sempervirens, the iconic symbol of Northern California, and one of the biological world’s most enduring emblem of longevity and majesty, the famous coast redwood.

On Monday, at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz, the coast redwood gets a moment in the spotlight with the screening of “Giants Rising: The Secrets and Superpowers of the Redwoods,” a stirring documentary that touches on the ecological, cultural and historical significance of the world’s tallest trees. If this film doesn’t bring out the tree-hugger in you, it probably can’t be done. 

The film’s vision encompasses the entire range of the coast redwood, a narrow band along the coast from Big Sur to the California/Oregon border. But Santa Cruz County plays a central role in the film, with a focus on Big Basin Redwoods State Park and its recovery from the trauma of the CZU Complex fires. (Some of the film was shot in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in Felton as well.)

Filmmaker Lisa Landers had already conceived of a film about the redwoods when CZU hit in the summer of 2020. Big Basin, as California’s oldest state park and the place where the save-the-redwoods movement first emerged more than 100 years ago, was already going to loom large in the film’s narrative. But Landers had done some work on another film project at Big Basin shortly before the fires. When she returned about six weeks after the first lightning strikes, she stood among the heartbreaking devastation and decided that Big Basin had to assume an even larger role in her film.

“It was just gut-wrenching,” said Landers. “The smoke was so thick, and I turned to [California State Parks environmental scientist] Portia Halbert and said, ‘This has to be part of my bigger story.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, bring it on.’”

Landers returned to Big Basin for interviews and more shooting, and “it became clear that this was the story that perfectly shows how our lives are intertwined with the story of the redwoods, and as they keep evolving with these changes to the climate, that we’re all in this together.”

Landers grew up in New York but had her first experience with the redwoods at the age of 12 on a trip with her family to Muir Woods in Marin County. She now lives in a small house among them, about a 15-minute drive from the very spot where she saw her first redwood tree. 

“That moment just lit me up in a way that I had never experienced before,” she said. “I was a kid who was really into ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and fantasy sci-fi, and I thought [upon seeing my first redwood], ‘Oh, my gosh. This is real. It’s here.’ And so I really think that moment, that experience with the redwoods, is really what led me, in many ways, to make a career out of telling stories about the natural world. It’s what led me to eventually leave my home in my native New York.”

Her goal in “Giants Rising” was to tell the full story of the redwoods, a kind of comprehensive “Coast Redwoods 101” treatment of the subject, with a few vivid examples of how the redwoods have impacted human civilization, including the story of an artist working to photograph a redwood and project it in actual size onto San Francisco’s Ferry Building as well as the Yurok tribe of California’s far north and their centuries-long cohabitation with the redwood. 

Of course, the inescapable central truth of the human experience with the redwoods is a story of plunder, thanks to the nearly insatiable demand for redwood lumber, especially in the 19th century. Only 5% of the old-growth redwoods that once covered the California Coast Range still exist. And even that small percentage exists mostly because of the organized efforts of some committed activists. 

The film documents the voracious cutting down of old-growth forests as well as the efforts to save what was left. It presents a contentious story of environmentalists pitted against timber interests that lingers well into the modern era, with footage from the struggle from recent decades of activists confronting lumber companies. Landers herself once visited the most famous of save-the-redwoods activists, Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived for two years in the top of a 200-foot-tall redwood named Luna. 

“Yeah, I climbed up that tree,” she said. “And while we were sitting up there, it hit me again. That was another moment of pushing me along the path of making this film. I thought, ‘Wow, I know how deeply these trees have impacted me, but just look at what they did to her and so many other people who have been willing to risk so much to protect these trees.’ What other kinds of trees do that to people?”

Through the use of animation, Landers also works to illustrate some of the science behind redwoods and the resilience that has allowed them to live for hundreds of years. Landers said she has worked in the past with natural history museums, helping them communicate sometimes-complex scientific ideas to a lay public. Animation technology, for instance, allowed her to illustrate how water makes it to the top of some of the tallest trees, which can grow up to 300 feet. 

The film and its imagery will, of course, land differently with audiences in Northern California than other parts of the world. 

“Giants Rising” opens with an effort to evoke the very specific sensual experience of being in the redwood forest, the coolness, the quiet, the aromas. Landers has traveled to far-flung places across the country and around the world with the film, and often she is showing it to an audience largely unfamiliar with the in-person redwoods experience. On stage, she’ll coax the audience into calling forth imagination or memory to open themselves up to what it’s like to be among some of the oldest and tallest living creatures on Earth.

“I get people to kind of tap into that feeling before they start watching,” she said. “And for people who live among the redwoods, we can picture that pretty vividly, right? We know that feeling when we walk into a redwood grove. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised — thrilled, really — to see that it kind of works with people who have never stepped foot in the redwoods, because they all have their own trees or their forests that they’re connected to. In [Washington], we sold out the Department of the Interior, 550 seats, and there was a line way down the aisle, people wanting to ask questions. Depending where I show it, people are asking different kinds of questions. So, in D.C., they’re talking about policy and science. But when I show it in Mendocino, they’re talking about this kind of spirituality and the time scales. So it makes me think that everybody can find a way to tap into this story.”

“Giants Rising” will be screened at the Rio Theatre on Monday, Oct. 14. Showtime is 7 p.m. Tickets are $10.

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