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MOVIE BLOCK 3

Friday, 9/16 - 10am

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Be Wild to ReWild

What is wildness and to what extent is the concept of domestication based on a fear of the unfamiliar, fear of wildness? In order to make those changes in our environment, we need to start with addressing our own wildness. We must learn to be more trusting and more trustworthy. “Be Wild to ReWild" offers a glimpse into the wildness from the eyes of filmmaker Dick DeAngelis. Based on his interviews with three national rewilding and wilderness experts, this film brings light to who we are, where we live, and what it will take to help ALL life, human and non-human, survive and thrive.

Farmers: Peru

Roberto is a banana farmer, local radio host, family man, and dear friend. He wears many hats, but is above all, a pillar of strength to a community which often goes overlooked. Living in a region hard hit by the pandemic and economic inequalities, his resilience is crucial.

With a new government in the horizon, Roberto hopes the working and trade conditions for him and his colleagues will improve. Yet, all he sees are production costs steadily rising and world market prices for bananas falling. An imbalance which puts a heavy burden on all farmers, psychologically and physically, and is heightened by Covid-19.

Roberto is one of three farmers featured in an unscripted documentary which follows Fairtrade farmers during the global pandemic in different corners of the world. Often forgotten, and yet crucial to our day-to-day, farmers had to carry on working during Covid-19, adjusting to a new reality while still facing other underlying societal challenges.

Farmers: Indonesia

Ponisih lives a community at the intersection of breaking traditions and keeping a legacy. Born in a village of coconut sugar farmers in Java, she decided to leave her roots and find a new life in a bigger city. Yet, after being there for several years it crystalized she was happier being a coconut sugar farmer and returned home. Ponisih now encourages a decreasing community of farmers to embrace similar choices. Yet, the next generation might have other plans. As the pandemic permeated bigger cities, Ponisih's family felt safe at home in the village of Hargorojo. She was reassured of her choice. But then everything changed. The delta variant of COVID-19 spread suddenly and unexpectedly.

Ponisih is one of three farmers featured in an unscripted documentary which follows Fairtrade farmers during the global pandemic in different corners of the world. Often forgotten, and yet crucial to our day-to-day, farmers had to carry on working during Covid-19, adjusting to a new reality while still facing other underlying societal challenges.

Farmers: Kenya

In a community that favors tradition, Caroline is an avid coffee farmer who speaks-up openly about her struggles, even if they are considered taboo. Living in the village of Setek, in Kenya, one her deepest desires is to become a mother, and yet, she and her husband have been unable to have a child. Besides personal despair, this situation has also meant being ostracized by many around her. Now, in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis, she has been able to access medical treatment for the first time when it comes to fertility. With high hopes for the future, Caroline also finds understanding amongst a group of local women who fight to earn their own income, and even transform their community when it comes to climate resilience. Caroline is one of the three farmers featured in an unscripted documentary which follows Fairtrade farmers during the global pandemic in different corners of the world. Often forgotten, and yet crucial to our day-to-day, farmers had to carry on working during Covid-19, adjusting to a new reality while still facing other underlying societal challenges.

Farming on the Urban Edge

Nine different farmers operating in the peri-urban regions of Portland and Seattle recount the realties of farming along the rural-urban interface. Each session of the series explores a distinct set of challenges and opportunities related to farming in close proximity to the urban fringe, and provokes questions about what farming can look like in these dynamic transition zones where the line between farm and city is increasingly in flux.

Farm Free or Die

Farm Free or Die shows how transformative agricultural policies can improve farming livelihoods while addressing the climate crisis. The stories of farmers on the front lines of severe environmental and economic adversity will catalyze support for policies that stabilize rural communities, strengthen food security, and incentivize soil health and carbon removal.

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MOVIE BLOCK 4

Friday, 9/16 - 2pm

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The Aftermath

LaChelle Hunt’s “The Aftermath”, is a moody Common Era drama atop the windy seaside hills of Point Reyes. Evelyn arrives in California in 1912 after traveling across America to pursue her dreams once shared with another. She deals with being alone on this journey and looks through her darkness to find a new light.

On the Underside

Experimental, student film.

The Hungry Artist

A glimpse into the daily life and artistic practice of professional artist Elizabeth Barenis.

Lunch with Alice Waters

The journey of a Chef that teaches children cooking from the garden who finally gets to have lunch with her life long mentor, Alice Waters.

Buzzkill

German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG installs a light-hearted mural about bees in the quaint Oakhurst section of Decatur, Georgia. What they hadn't bargained on was the community’s offshoot conversation and response about the plight of bees, corporate-sponsored murals, fragile ecology and angry allegations of `greenwashing.’   

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MOVIE BLOCK 7

Sunday, 9/18 - 11am

I, Sheep (Short)
I, Sheep combines video, poetry and performance to tell the story of a single ewe and her links to a farm and farming family.

Lone Wolf (Short)

Jack, a reclusive writer, just can’t bring himself to connect with those around him. Although lonely he dismisses the efforts of his neighbour, Michael to befriend him. One evening Jack encounters a sheep trapped in a fence. Freeing the animal Jack returns home alone, but the sheep has other ideas. The sheep refuses to abandon his liberator. He follows Jack home and stages a vigil outside his window. Jack is bewildered and exasperated by his new admirer. After trying in vain to deter the animal he finally relents, inviting him in for tea. As Jack escorts the sheep back to his field, he encounters Michael. Michael explains the sheep is his and the two bond as Jack recounts his story. The new friends agree to meet again and Jack returns home jubilant in the knowledge that he is no longer alone.

This Oul Fermin Life (Short)

Based around the Charlie Gillen poem of the same name, this drama follows a lonely farmer as he meditates on the hard rural life that he has chosen. Working as one with nature, he compares his life to that of those caught in the ‘rat race’, and questions what is important in life.

This oul fermin life is a struggle,
It’s sore on a boadies oul bak’,
Whut wae liftin an slipein an stoopin,
I hae tane nearly al’ I can tak’.

The poem uses elements of Ulster-Scots, a rural dialect/language that is spoken in Ireland in regions such as North Antrim, the Ards Peninsula and Donegal. Like the farmer himself, the language is seen by many as old fashioned and slowly dying out.

Axiomata (Short)

Universal Newton's law of motion as an opportunity to build unity between humans, regardless of the age, the body look or race.

Newton's law of motion are universal. We all are bodies in motion responding to the same universal laws. With an intergenerational and inter-ethnical group of non dancers, Beatriz Mediavilla uses the 3 laws to build in situ choreographies that presents those topics.

La Frontiere (Feature - French with English Subtitles)

In the field, we accompany a biologist responsible for the implementation of renaturation solutions, the most coherent with the activities already present. A series of hedgerows planted to ensure bocage continuity is a typical means of providing food and shelter for small mammals involved in an ecosystem that includes cultivated fields and wild lands. Compromises are made to allow continued passage with farm machinery. The viewer discovers that it is possible to observe significant changes in biodiversity if one is attentive to the smallest phenomena, such as the return of butterflies that had disappeared. Through the testimonies of involved farmers, we learn that synergies between animals, plants and farms increasingly make it possible to do without chemical substitutes, those that have long accompanied the productivist approach on which agriculture is still largely dependent. From the scouting in the middle of winter, to the informal meetings between participants discussing in the middle of the heat wave, the film shows from the inside an experience of active awareness but not without its paradoxes. How to reconcile issues as remote as profitability and biodiversity.

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MOVIE BLOCK 8

Sunday, 9/18 - 2:30pm

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Garden Flow (Short)

In fall 2020, the SIUE Dept. of Theater & Dance had to get creative in order to perform their fall dance showcase in an era of COVID.

Omar Sosa's 88 Well-Tuned Drums  (Feature)

OMAR SOSA'S 88 WELL-TUNED DRUMS is a feature-length documentary film on the life and music of Cuba-born pianist and composer, Omar Sosa (b. 1965). Multiple Grammy-nominee Omar Sosa is one of the most versatile jazz artists on the scene today. He fuses a wide range of jazz, world music, and electronic elements with his native Afro-Cuban roots to create a fresh and original sound—with a Latin jazz heart.

Extensive interviews with Omar Sosa, archival video and stills, and, of course, a lot of music form the backbone of the film, with animated segments bringing bold and colorful movement to Sosa’s stories, especially early ones for which there is no supporting material. The film traces Sosa’s artistic origins from his birth and childhood in Camagüey, Cuba’s third-largest city, conservatory education at the prestigious Escuela Nacional de Música in Havana, military service in Angola during that country’s long civil war, and eventual relocation to Ecuador where, for a time, he wrote, arranged, and performed commercial jingles. Sosa’s story continues with a fateful mid-90s move to the U.S., a stint as a sought-after sideman in the Bay Area’s burgeoning Latin jazz scene, and partnership with longtime manager Scott Price that continues to this day. In his 25+ years as a solo artist, Omar Sosa has released over 30 albums and received four Grammy nominations and three Latin Grammy nominations. Often performing as many as 100 concerts across six continents annually, Sosa is known for a rhythmic style and musical influences and collaborators as diverse as his travel itinerary. As Eugene Holley writes in a 2004 Village Voice piece that inspired the film’s title, “Sosa’s pianisms evoke distant echoes of McCoy Tyner's power, Keith Jarrett's improvisational flights of fancy, and Thelonious Monk's angular harmonies, transforming the piano into 88 well-tuned drums.”

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