Timothy Wildgoose, Director of Photography
"Seeing these people who are willing to put their bodies, their freedom, and their lives on the line in order to make the change is so inspiring. It pushes me to ask myself, 'What am I giving, what am I sacrificing to be the change?'”
Goose, as he is known on set, is an Emmy Award® winning cinematographer living in Portland, Oregon. He approaches film and image-making with a desire to cultivate empathy and encourage folx to bravely embrace the present moment, to find and enjoy the subtlety and divinity here.
“I cherish the act of making films, particularly documentary and non-narrative film, as a unique experience to immerse myself in other people’s lives in an unparalleled way. It’s an incredibly potent way of enlarging my own heart and increasing my own empathy.”
As a queer cis-man, Wildgoose feels a kinship for the quiet stories that need to be told the most, the stories of people overcoming challenges and strife against all odds. He believes that to change people’s minds we have to start with the heart; a closed and hardened heart is the biggest obstacle.
"Making films changes me and I hope that the films change the people who watch them in the same way."
Wildgoose has worked with Director Jan Haaken and Co-director Samantha Praus on Our Bodies Our Doctors as well as the two-part NECESSITY Series.
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“Working with Jan & Sam is particularly potent. Jan has a fearless rebelliousness rooted in love and hardened by her incredible intellect. She’s down to break rules that need to be broken. She’s bold and unstoppable and is so inspiring in so many ways. We started working together with Our Bodies Our Doctors and I knew then how incredibly prescient that film would be. It changed me, working on it. I went from being Pro-Choice, seeing it as a necessary harm that we should avoid but have access to when needed, to full on pro-abortion. I learned so much and saw so much of the impacts that forced pregnancy has. Being present in the room for procedures changed me. It’s something that men don’t see unless they are a doctor. I was so moved by the bravery of the women who allowed me to be present, their trust, and their understanding of how necessary it is for the story to be told.”
“[Before working on the NECESSITY project,] I thought, “Yeah, we should all transition away from fossil fuels, it's obvious they are terrible, especially terrible things like fracking and tar sands - but yet, we all still benefit from the use of fossil fuels in our daily lives”. By the end of the project I saw that the obligation of divesting from fossil fuels is not and cannot be on the individual - that the corporations, the owning class - are the ones controlling, benefiting, and responsible for the exploitation of resource extraction. It sounds so obvious saying it out loud, but the onus cannot be on the individual to change their habits. We have to force the hand of these companies and institutions and these activists, these 'normal' people found ways to use their body and sovereignty as leverage to stand up against Power. Not everyone can do that, but we all have to participate in our own ways to reel in those in power and reign in all the ways our culture is radically out of alignment with nature.”
You can see Timothy’s work on
NECESSITY: Climate Justice & the Thin Green Line
at the Kiggins Theatre in Vancouver, WA