Permaculture expert Geoff Lawton describes how he and a team of volunteers grew an oasis in arid, salty lowland, despite extremely high temperatures and minimal irrigation. The site is the lowest dryland expanse on Earth: a plain in Jordan, two kilometres northeast of the Dead Sea, and 400 metres below sea level.
A group of teenagers go out to a den in the woods for a night of drinking, unaware that their behaviour touches on issues of ritual, folklore, mysticism and UFOs.
An exploration of a new paradigm of health, science, and medicine, based on the interconnections between us and nature.
Voices of the Transition is an enthusiastic documentary on farmers- and community-led responses to food insecurity in a scenario of climate change and peak oil.
"Voice of the wind" (La Voz del Viento) describes a journey made by Carlos and Jean-Luc from Marseille to Granada visiting different projects related to permaculture, thought and action, all focused on a vision of life respect and love. In each of those places, they delivered or exchanged seeds (Jean-Luc has more than 300 varieties) and interviewed some key project people. This film is open source and can be watched/downloaded for free (English/French/Spanish) in the official website. Donations are more than welcome.
A sublime documentary on childhood and bereavement that’s one of several shorts the filmmaker completed while working in Algeria for Georges Derocles’s company Les Studios Africa, for whom he would shortly make his breakthrough feature The Olive Trees of Justice.
How safe is the future of the world’s food? This documentary explores a growing crisis in world agriculture. Plant breeding has created today’s crops, which are high yielding but vulnerable to disease and insects. To keep crops healthy, breeders tap all the genetic diversity of the world’s food plants. But that rich resource is quickly being wiped out. (NFB)
In the Moroccan desert night dilutes forms and silence slides through sand. Dawn starts then to draw silhouettes of dunes while motionless figures punctuate landscape. From night´s abstraction, light returns its dimension to space and their volume to bodies. Stillness concentrates gaze and duration densify it. The adhan -muslim call to pray- sounds and immobility, that was condensing, begins to irradiate. And now the bodies are those which dissolves into the desert.
King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.
As the global economics of dairy farming has winnowed out most small and medium-sized dairies, the surviving farmers confront pressures to intensify production, even as they find that getting bigger presents new problems.
A global nightmare is unfolding as farmers and scientists stand at a crossroads questioning the impacts of pesticides and herbicides on human health. At the center of this controversy is glyphosate, the primary active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world. Glyphosate was recently identified as a possible cancer causing agent and is now found in breast milk, baby food, wine and 80% of food grown in the United States. Why is glyphosate filtering into so many facets of our daily lives? And why are countries banning glyphosate while the United States uses more of it than any other country in the world? Children Of The Vine will peel back the curtain on the flawed regulatory practices that are causing more harm than good to public health while also revealing the scary science behind toxic farming practices. In the end, this solution driven documentary will highlight more sustainable large scale farming practices capable of feeding the world.
Paul and Phyllis van Amburgh, believing that a small, family farm is the best place to raise their children, take their life savings and buy a defunct dairy. With three children and a fourth on the way and armed only with their principles and determination, they fight to defy the odds as they become full time farmers. THE FIRST SEASON, through an intimate, cinema verite style, bears witness to the Van Amburgh's struggle as they fight against relentless toil, financial ruin and the harsh reality of diary farming to achieve their version of the American dream.
London-based artist and photographer Muzi Quawson examines the lives of people situated at the fringes of the mainstream. She is drawn to individuals who tend to assert their identity via a blending of references informed by cinema, music and the history of popular culture. Doll Parts functions as a quiet study on the nature of identity.
This film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent ten years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.
In this short documentary from the Canada Vignettes series, a Saskatchewan grain elevator is moved across the snow-covered prairie to a new home after nearly a half-century of use. The film follows the lifting and transporting of the 9-storey, 200-ton structure, and examines the feelings of the people as they witness the final passing of their town's one and only grain elevator.
On an island in the Indian Ocean, the Comoros archipelago, unoccupied houses await the arrival of their owners. These places without souls and half built abound across the landscape. The myth of eternal return is repeated in the Comorian diaspora.
This feature-length educational film teaches you how to set up your own permaculture orchard at virtually any scale. We recognize the limitations of the organic model as a substitute to conventional fruit growing, and want to propose a more holistic, regenerative approach based on permaculture principles. Based on 20 years of applied theory and trial and error, biologist and educator Stefan Sobkowiak shares his experience transforming a conventional apple orchard into an abundance of biodiversity that virtually takes care of itself. The concepts, techniques and tips presented in this film will help you with your own project, whether it is just a few fruit trees in your urban backyard, or a full-scale multi-acre commercial orchard.
Environmental film maker John D. Liu documents large-scale ecosystem restoration projects in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East, highlighting the enormous benefits for people and planet of undertaking these efforts globally.