One of the great pleasures of working on LOOK & SEE was collaborating with artist and wood engraver Wesley W. Bates. Wesley's work has long accompanied Wendell Berry's poetry. When he agreed to provide original images for our film we were truly thrilled. Because each image involves such painstaking effort, we asked Wesley to film a block from start to finish. At two hours long, the video is a distillation of three days of his effort. And Wesley provided over ten such engravings along with the film's signature block of Wendell Berry.
Himself
There is a popular theory that it takes at least 10,000 hours of focused practice for a human to become expert in any field. In Japan, there are craftspeople who go far beyond this to reach a special kind of mastery. These people are called Takumi and they devote 60,000 hours to their craft. That's 8 hours a day, 240 days a year, for over 30 years. It's an almost superhuman level of dedication to a life of repetition and no shortcuts. This film asks the question: Will human craft disappear as artificial intelligence reaches beyond our limits?
Set in a small farming community in mid Wales, a place where Koppel's parents - both refugees - found a home. This is a landscape and population that is changing rapidly as small scale agriculture is disappearing and the generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out. Much influenced by his conversations with the writer Peter Handke, the film maker leads us on a poetic and profound journey into a world of endings and beginnings; a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire.
A documentary about Swiss mountain folk.
The lives of 7 friends in a small Czech town from 1945 to some time after 1958.
Facing seizure of their own lands, two families found themselves farming together on the same field, hoping to get through just another rice-farming season like every year. But no matter how much the world is evolving, how much the country is going through economic, political and social changes, they still cannot grasp that ideology of happiness.
This documentary film follows farmers and activists fighting together to stop the Indiana Enterprise Center, a mega-sized industrial park planned west of South Bend, Indiana
The Fruit Hunters explores the little known subculture and history of rare fruit hunters who travel the globe in an obsessive search for the exotic, in this stylish and sometimes erotic documentary.
This short documentary pays tribute to the craftsmen everywhere whose work adds color and richness to life. Filmed in the Canadian Arctic, Finland, India, Nigeria, Japan, Mexico, and Poland, it shows the special skills of artisans working at their crafts - stone sculpture, pottery, ceramics, weaving, dyeing, puppet making, embroidery. Each indigenous skill is a reflection of the culture of the country.
Unraveling the mystery of perfume creation, the House of Dior is opening its doors. Over the course of a year, we followed new perfumer Francis Kurkdjian in one of his greatest challenges: reinventing the iconic "J'adore". A unique sensory journey, from conception to launch, into a secret world of passionate artisans.
As the international consumption of quinoa rises. The Mother Grain looks at how this increasing demand is affecting quinoa farmers. Bear Witness Pictures traveled to the Bolivian quinoa-growing communities surrounding the world's largest salt flat, the Salar de Uyuni, witnessing their lives first-hand to tell the story of quinoa from the perspective of the farmers themselves.
Mother India is home to many castes, tribes and religions and one common factor that brings this diverse country all together is Jewelry. Come explore the deep history and culture of the jewelry of India dating back more than 5000 years. As we explore the history we also take you into Bangalore, India and talk to local Jewelry Stores and Jewelry Artisans as they share their stories and their family history of their involvement in jewelry going far back into their family ancestry.
In 1979, Louis Malle films the thriving lives of a Minnesota farming community, but returns six years later to document its drastic economic decline, offering a poignant look at the impact of political changes.
Modern British dairy farms must get bigger and bigger or go under but Farmer Stephen Hook decides to buck the trend. Instead he chooses to have a great relationship with his small herd of cows and ignore the big supermarkets and dairies. The result is a laugh-out-loud emotional roller-coaster of a film, a heart warming tearjerker about the incredible bonds between man, animal and countryside in a fast disappearing England.
This film weaves together expert analysis of America's food and farming system with a powerful narrative of one extraordinary farmer who is determined to create a sustainable future for his community.
Sheds light on an alternative approach to farming called “regenerative agriculture” that could balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world.
Three family-owned farms on the Delmarva Peninsula and their success using practices that protect and promote healthy soil; practices that also safeguard working lands against the extremes posed by climate change.
Ever since it was revealed that the chocolate industry is involved with child slavery in the Ivory Coast, the industry has been busy – due to consumer demands – explaining what exactly it does to actively fight trafficking and child labour. But does the industry live up to its own promises?In this investigative film, director Miki Mistrati tries to find out, if the chocolate industry – which is one of the largest corporations in the world – speak the truth, when they say that they provide education, medical care etc for the children of the Ivory Coast. But the project runs into trouble already from the get-go, because the embassy of the Ivory Coast won’t let Miki enter the country until he has an invitation – from the chocolate industry.