Culture Driven,
Environment Inspired,
Documentary Film.
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OVERVIEW:

Activist and urban farmer Germaine Jenkins is taking on the power structure in Charleston, SC, to establish a cooperative farm that would counter the tide of toxic food that has been ravaging the community for decades. Will this gleaming oasis in a food desert survive and advance civil rights’ latest frontier, or prove to have been just another mirage in the longstanding battle against food apartheid?

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OVERVIEW:

In the shadow of a mountain, a place once known as the Magic City stands as a symbol of the American heartland, abandoned by industry and disappearing back into the forest. The Mountain and the Magic City is an intimate portrait of neighbors forced to confront the issues dividing America today when a controversial national park comes to town.

With a 20 year controversy surrounding a 90,000 acre spot of land and a no-stoplight town, as filmmakers, we find ourselves at ground zero of globalization, class-based disenfranchisement, and anti-government sentiment in our country. What could this film about a small town in Maine help us discover about ourselves as a nation?

Currently in production and due out in 2018.

OVERVIEW:

Ray Reitze, legendary Maine wilderness guide and gentle spirit, shares his philosophy of how to live in harmony with the outdoors to the next generation of guides—all the while grappling with his own mortality as he transitions from the physical world of guiding to a more spiritual understanding of nature and our ephemeral place within it.  Ray, and his philosophy of how to live in health and harmony with the natural world, is our guide, our example and our inspiration. 

OVERVIEW:

Marty Schnure and Ross Donihue are modern day pioneers: roaming some of the world’s last remaining wild lands to create maps to help conserve these precious places. Through their project with conservationist Kris Tompkins and Conservacion Patagonica to map the new Patagonia Park in Chilean Patagonia, The Nature of Maps explores the integral role maps play in conservation, adventure and our understanding of wild places.

Made in Partnership With: Conservacion Patagonica

OVERVIEW:

The Land For Maine’s Future (LMF) program has been setting aside land for Maine people for 30 years. But not everyone understands the benefits of the program. Fisherman Wayne Davis challenges our stereotypes about what conservation looks like.

One of three from a series of PSA's —
Made in Partnership With: Land for Maine's Future Coalition, The Nature Conservancy  &  Maine Coast Heritage Trust

OVERVIEW:

A mid-length film in three parts that explores the growing pains of the local food movement and the uncertain fate of the farmers and farmland that keep it alive.

While "buying local" is on the rise, these three poignant vignettes make clear that small farms and access to locally produced food is not a sure thing. In Growing Local, we meet father and son organic dairy farmers struggling with the realities of producing a commodity food product to keep their farm going and in the family, we follow an artisanal butcher who helps us understand how healthy, thoughtful meat production can be supported and sustained, and the series closes with the story of a young farm couple who, on risky sweat-equity, have revitalized a fertile piece of farmland into a thriving community food hub. These stories help us to better understand the interconnected fates of farmers and farmland, consumers and the local food movement.

Made in Partnership With: Growing Local — Maine Farmland Trust

OVERVIEW:

A famously fertile piece of land that had produced food for centuries—and once boasted its own store—had been protected with an agricultural easement, ensuring that it could never be developed into house lots; but there was no guarantee that it would ever be actively farmed again. With the financial help of the landowner, young farmers Ben and Taryn Marcus revitalize the farm and transform the store into a thriving community food hub; yet they live with little security to show for all their toil. Seeding a Dream helps us realize the value that young farmers bring to our communities and better understand the challenges these farmers face.

Made in Partnership With: Growing Local — Maine Farmland Trust

OVERVIEW:

A dairy farmer for over 40 years, Richard Beal became one of the state’s first organic dairy farmers 17 years ago. However, producing milk—even organic milk—as a commodity that is sold with a small profit margin to a processor has taken a serious financial toll. Now he struggles with how to pass the farm onto his son, Adam, without putting either of them into crushing debt or forcing them to sell off land to developers. His daughter, Amanda, is a food systems consultant and married to a budding cheese-maker who offers a possible new way forward. Changing Hands highlights the human cost of operating a farm in a culture of cheap food, and ponders the fate of the local food movement and working farmland if small-scale family farms cannot survive in the industrialized food system.

Made in Partnership With: Growing Local — Maine Farmland Trust

OVERVIEW:

Ben Slayton is an entirely new breed of middleman. First a farmer, now an artisanal butcher, Ben is helping Maine farmers and consumers to circumvent the industrialized food system by creating a new distribution model to improve access to healthy, sustainably-raised meat. His new approach is based on a gamble that consumers are increasingly aware and concerned about the physical, environmental and economic impact of their food choices. PIG NOT PORK is a portrait of a local food movement in transition and an entrepreneur willing to take risks to create the kind a world we will want to live (and eat) in.

Made in Partnership With: Growing Local — Maine Farmland Trust

OVERVIEW:

While maintaining a traditional gaucho lifestyle, Javier works as a tour guide and also helps regenerate land that has deteriorated significantly due to agricultural use by previous generations of gauchos. Javier is not tempted by the lure of a faster paced lifestyle and instead believes strongly in the joy and beauty of rural life. El Campo es Vida (The Country is Life) is a portrait of a young man living a dichotomous life in one of the world’s last remaining truly wild places.

Made in Partnership With: Patagonia Sur

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