Vegan for Animals, Vegan for Humans with Shawn Bannon

Welcome to Essential Ingredients, I'm your host, Justine Reichman. Today with me is Shawn Bannon. He is a documentary filmmaker. Today, we are here to talk about The Smell of Money and learn more about him. Welcome, Shawn.

Oh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate being on your program.

I'm so excited to learn more about you and The Smell of Money. This is coming out next week already. And this is a little prelude and a little special insight and guest appearance before the Mindful Eating Film Festival that's coming up. We're so pleased to have you here to learn more about you and what we can expect to see at the film festival. So Shawn, if you'd like to tell us a little bit about yourself so our audience can get to know you?

Okay. I'm a documentary filmmaker. I've been making films for 15 or so years, usually with an environmental theme of some kind, lots of a lot of animal rights work. I've actually filmed up several times with Miyoko. I've filmed animal rescues, and I filmed her cheese factory, which has been really cool. And this movie, though, I went out to North Carolina and filmed over the course of four years.

So why animals? You talk a lot about animals and about farming, how did you get into that space?

I've been vegan now for about 26 years. A very long time. When I went to film school, I became vegan at the same time. So my filmmaking and my activism kind of started at the same exact time. But early on, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't living in a bubble so I always try to balance out my filmmaking and not just do activist work. It's not always easy to do that so I get kind of swept up in doing my activist work, but it's also can be very challenging because these are very, I've done investigations, I've worked on, even very intense factory farming, going into factory farms and filming, open investigations, I filmed elephant cruelty, all these kinds of things over the years. And it's very challenging. I do go and try to actively film very fun and entertaining stuff as well to take a break every once in a while because this kind of work can be exhausting.

So what came first, the desire to be vegan, the desire to activate it, or the desire to film to connect the two.

Filming came first for me. When I was researching doing a film about animal experimentation, I was actually a vegetarian before I became a filmmaker. So I kind of had an interest in activism. I guess technically, activism did come first for me. But my filmmaking, it just didn't connect at all until I was really making my first film and researching about animal experimentation. I just went kind of vegan overnight. That's kind of the beginning. And then it's just been, I was really a hardcore vegan right away. Like overnight. My mom was just so angry because she hadn't made all this banana bread, my favorite banana bread. I was just like, sorry, well, what can I do? It was like the next stage, like, what are you talking about? But she understood. It's been amazing ever since. It's just one of those things like 26 years later. The reasons I'm vegan now are so different from the reasons I started in the first place. I'm glad I'm still vegan. But now, living this lifestyle for so long, it's just as everything's changed so much over that time period.

Was there like a couple of things that you learned through your investigation that really impacted you to make that decision?

One of those things where I'm so passionate about the animals early on, and it's one of those things I think when you witness it in person, I don't want to talk emotionally about it. I am one of those people that once I start getting emotional, it's hard for me to stop. And it's being emotional about animal stuff is one of, I think the hardest thing is to no society is not emotional as a whole about animal issues. And that's one thing I've learned is like, and to understand why that is, and I think that's been the hardest thing to understand like, I get you understand why humans now as a culture, American culture is very distant from factory farming and how our culture can look the other way. But we also love our companion animals. That was something early on that was very hard for me to deal with. I think now I understand why that is. It's frustrating, but I can't live with that kind of pain all the time. So right now, a lot of my work I do, I try to focus on these huge major corporations and not individuals. I spend a lot of my time focused on individuals at some point, and that's where I feel like you get really burned out and stuff trying to make every single person go vegan and stuff. It can be very challenging.

Really, really hard. So I'm curious, tell me the objective of your films, what's the biggest objective you have in creating these films, or producing these films?

With The Smell of Money, specifically, it's about communities in North Carolina that are impacted by environmental factors. So it's really not talking about the conditions for the animals themselves. We started filming over four years ago now, and that's the time I'm like, okay, now, I'm not just vegan for the animals, I'm also vegan for humans. I recognize that being compassionate for humans is also just very, very important being understanding of the conditions that people are living in and the oppression that is going on in American culture as well. And just understanding that food choices, and food access, and economic decisions that people have can be very challenging for people. So that's one of the biggest lessons I learned filming in North Carolina is you're filming in communities where a lot of people are living off of well water. So with their wells getting contaminated by Hogwarts pollution and they have to drink that water, what's the alternative for them? That's pretty insane. You have a billion dollar corporation saying, no, we didn't pollute that water. It's pretty insane. So some of those communities have access now like they piped in water, but now those residents have to pay for that water. And that economy, that can really impact money that's survived and been able to grow their own vegetables and grow their own food now has to pay for those resources where they were self-sufficient for decades and decades.

Well, so when you initially, you've screened this film before?

So we premiered at Sarasota in April, and we won the Jury Award, which was really exciting for us. And then we had an international premiere of Hot Docs in Canada, which is North America's biggest Documentary Film Festival, and we got the top five audience for it. So that was really exciting. So this will be our West Coast premiere, Mindful Eating Film Festival. So that's very exciting.

I'm just curious, so when you premiered this in those communities, what were some of the responses that you got?

I feel like in Canada Hot Docs, it's been very emotional. We've been lucky where community members have been at the screenings, and I think for people to meet people impacted by these industries and to sit next to them, it changes you forever. Honestly, filming in these communities changes you forever. It's something I do, you do have to see the movie, I can't really explain it. It's like one of those things. So we are having a screening the week after with all the community members in North Carolina. Otherwise, we would have brought people out to the Mindful Eating Festival. It was just too challenging with the tight turnaround because it is a big screening and North kind of just for community members. And it's just a lot to ask them to travel because a lot of them do, a lot of people in the film have different health issues which you'll see when you're watching the movie, which is a big part of the movie is the pollution, the air pollution, the water pollution, it's something that a lot of the residents have been living with for decades now. And there just has not been a good solution to clean up these issues. So that's really what we're trying to do is not just shine a light on this, but to motivate people to motivate change. Say, hey, look, you know where your food comes from? All of us have a decision. But even individual choices aren't enough. We do need to change laws. We need to work together to get laws changed in this country to protect people and the environment.

Wow. Well, I am certainly looking forward to seeing this film next week. So with all the other things going on at this film festival next week, I'm sure you've looked at the list of other films coming up. What are you most looking forward to seeing as well?

Goodness, a lot of the other films I've actually seen already. I watch a lot of documentaries. I've watched all of them, but I'm just excited to go to the festival. I'm excited to meet the other filmmakers and talk to them. And I know the food I'm really coming for, like we have food and just hanging out with everybody, and getting to chat and being in the same space as everybody is really, really important. And talking about the movies. And the area too is just a beautiful part of this country. I love going to Northern California. Miyoko is so awesome. She's been super inspiring, and I hope to visit her sanctuary up there too.

Yeah, me too. She's very close to me so I'm looking forward to going to do that soon too. So for those that want to check out what you've worked on in the past, what you're going to be working on in the future and just learn about this project a little bit more, how might they go find you online?

The best option for the movie is smellofmoneydoc.com. We have an Instagram, as well as Twitter which have the same URL. And for personal, shawnbannon.com, or go to my Vimeo account, which is shawnbannon@vimeo, I believe something like that.

We'll make sure to put it in the show notes. So Shawn, thanks so much for joining me today. I'm excited to meet you next week at the film festival. And for those that are not familiar with The Smell of Money, go check it out. And we're excited to see this film festival next week, so if you haven't gotten your tickets yet, make sure to check out the calendar, check out what's going on. There's a lot of great stuff going on at the film festival from Rancho Compasion and the list of films that will be screening and all the panels. So Shawn, thanks again for sharing a little bit about you, a little bit about the film and what we can expect.

Cool. Thank you so much. I really appreciate having me on today.

I want to thank our guests for tuning in, whether you're watching the podcast or you're listening to whether it's the videocast or the podcast. We'll see you again. Thanks so much, Shawn.