Hacking at Leaves

This session opens with a screening-linked panel for the documentary Hacking at Leaves, which had its US premiere at the conference. The film follows a small hackerspace in Durango, Colorado, whose members contributed to COVID relief efforts, and places that story within the history of American colonialism and the Navajo Nation. Participants introduced themselves, including filmmaker Johannes Grenzfurthner, producer Jasmin Hagendorfer and Peter Romine, an engineering educator at Navajo Technical University.

Romine described how his program teaches students to build practical projects for their own communities. Examples included a solar-powered medicine cooler designed by a nursing student for a family with no reliable electricity, and an air filter adapted from a box fan to reduce fine dust linked to asthma in Navajo homes. The panel also discussed why the story needed its wider historical context to make sense, and how the team tried to represent Indigenous voices without relying on stereotypes, including the many women involved in hacker circles.

In audience questions, Grenzfurthner addressed why an Austrian filmmaker chose to tell a story about Native American history, arguing that privilege should be used to pass the microphone to others. He also reflected on political labels and framed the film as being about communities, some chosen and some inherited, with solidarity across them as the goal. Attendees also learned where his earlier films could be found.