The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island (2009)

Directed by: Suzanne Raes | 89 minutes | documentary

On July 10, 1985, the Earth comes to a standstill. At least for those who love the earth. On that day, a bomb explodes in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand, destroying the legendary ship The Rainbow Warrior. For almost eight years this was the flagship of Greenpeace. The tugboat – then still called the Sir William Hardy – was bought as a rusty old wreck by the founders of the British branch of the environmental organization, funded by the Dutch department of the WWF and completely refurbished in three months by youthful idealists from all over the world. . The ship was renamed The Rainbow Warrior, after an ancient Native American prophecy that humanity would perish from an ecological disaster if nature was not respected. Between 1978 and 1985, the crew of The Rainbow Warrior would make their voices heard in various places around the world. The boat itself would acquire legendary status.

In the documentary ‘The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island’ (2009), Dutch filmmaker Suzanne Raes takes her viewers back in time, to the heyday of the Rainbow Warrior. She also shows how things are going with the idealists of the past. What do they do now, how do they look back on their time on the ship and what has their crusade yielded? Coincidentally, many longtime activists have settled on New Zealand’s idyllic Waiheke Island. “It’s like a retirement home for former Greenpeace fighters,” one of them remarked. The documentary was partly shot in English and partly in Dutch. Three interviewees are Dutch. Martini Gotjé was once the navigator of the ship. Now he is a good family man. His long, gray ponytail is still a reminder of his wild days and he still fights for the environment, although now from his computer. The activist in him is still buzzing like never before; he gets mad about illegal shipping and whalers. Gotjé even has to take pills to keep calm.

Martini is not the only one in whose heart the idealist of yesteryear still resides. The British Susi Newborn, who was there from the very beginning, is still fighting hard. The same applies to the couple Bunny McDiarmid and Henk Haazen – she from New Zealand, he from the Netherlands – and the former ship’s cook Rien Achterberg. After the tragic bomb attack in which the Dutch-Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira was killed, Danish Hanne Sørensen decided to turn his back on Greenpeace. After all these years, however, she is still closely involved with the environment: she started an Eco-Village with her husband. She is also still good friends with her old Greenpeace buddies. While it is certainly interesting to see what has become of these people, the historical images of The Rainbow Warrior are the most impressive. The battle that Greenpeace fought against whalers is extensively portrayed. The activists formed a human shield between the whale and the huge ships of the whalers in their small, vulnerable zodiacs (outboard-engined dinghies). A battle that in theory they can never win. In practice, however, they have won, since whaling is banned in almost all countries in the world, partly due to the efforts of Greenpeace.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fight against nuclear tests in the Pacific. The Rainbow Warrior was deployed to evacuate the 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll, which is part of the Marshall Islands, after the US nuclear tests conducted there 31 years earlier were found to have a devastating effect on people and nature. The memory of the evacuation still evokes emotional reactions among the former activists. Even the tough Henk, sea bonk in heart and soul, has it just as difficult when he thinks about it. Incidentally, the idealists also get angry when they think back to that fatal bomb attack, committed by the French secret service as revenge for the interference of Greenpeace in Moruroa (the island where the French carried out their nuclear tests). A black page in the history of Greenpeace, which not only ended Pereira’s life, but also finally sank The Rainbow Warrior.

However, the ship still lives on in the hearts of the idealists Martini, Susi, Rien, Bunny, Henk and Hanne. This beautiful documentary shows that they became disillusioned by the event, but certainly did not give up. They live by the motto: once a warrior, always a warrior. Although ‘The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island’ does not excel in originality and creativity (the film follows the standard pattern of a documentary), Raes manages to captivate her viewer from the first moment with impressive archive material and interesting conversations with six sympathetic, passionate people of whom the world could use some more!