
After Winter, Spring (2012)
Family farmers in southwest France practice an ancestral way of life under threat in a world increasingly dominated by large-scale industrial agriculture.
Family farmers in southwest France practice an ancestral way of life under threat in a world increasingly dominated by large-scale industrial agriculture.
A short distance from Marseille, at Cape Morgiou, in the depths of the Calanques massif, lies the Cosquer cave, discovered only about thirty years ago by a diver, Henri Cosquer. With its bestiary of hundreds of paintings and engravings - horses, bison, jellyfish, penguins - the only underwater decorated cave in the world allows us to learn a little more about Mediterranean societies 30,000 years ago. Today, threatened by rising water levels accelerated by global warming, this jewel of the Upper Paleolithic is in danger of being swallowed up. To save the cave from disappearing, the Ministry of Culture has chosen to digitize it. From this virtual duplicate, a replica has been made on the surface to offer the public a reconstruction that allows them to admire these masterpieces.
This short documentary illustrates rural French Canadian life in the early 1940s. The film follows Alexis Tremblay and his family through the busy autumn days as they bring in the harvest and help with bread baking and soap making. Winter sees the children revelling in outdoor sports while the women are busy with their weaving, and, with the coming of spring young and old alike repair to the fields once more to plough the earth in preparation for another season of varied crops. One of the first NFB films to be produced, directed, written and shot by women.
When the Cows Come Home introduces audiences to Tilly and Maggie, a pair of cows that musician, journalist, artist and cow whisperer, Andrew Johnstone has befriended and subsequently saved from slaughter. The garrulous herdsman is enthusiastic to expound his views on animal husbandry, bovine communication and the vagaries of life in general, before the film walks us back through the events that have shaped the singular farmer-philosopher. From personal family tragedy to warring with Catholic school authorities, innovating in Hamilton’s nascent music scene to creating guerrilla art installations; Johnstone’s life has had a truly idiosyncratic trajectory. Mental health issues may have seen him retreat to life on the farm, but the film makes clear its subject’s restless inquisitiveness is far from being put out to pasture.
The drought in the American West is predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years. Join five Academy Award-winning filmmakers as they explore the environmental crisis of our time and how to fix it before it's too late.
Exposing the dark underbelly of modern animal agriculture through drones, hidden & handheld cameras, the feature-length film explores the morality and validity of our dominion over the animal kingdom.
A glimpse at how genre film-focused home video companies have taken the charge in preserving, restoring, and releasing so many works which otherwise might have been lost to time.
Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner examines how mammoth corporations have taken over all aspects of the food chain in the United States, from the farms where our food is grown to the chain restaurants and supermarkets where it's sold. Narrated by author and activist Eric Schlosser, the film features interviews with average Americans about their dietary habits, commentary from food experts like Michael Pollan and unsettling footage shot inside large-scale animal processing plants.
Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.
How did the willful daughter of a Himalayan forest conservator become Monsanto’s worst nightmare? The Seeds of Vandana Shiva tells the remarkable life story of Gandhian eco-activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, how she stood up to the corporate Goliaths of industrial agriculture, rose to prominence in the regenerative food movement, and inspired an international crusade for change.
During the rice sowing season, Jun, a young Catalan of Chinese origin, works as a seasonal worker in the Ebro Delta. This ancient labour will make him confront his own roots and the distance that separates him from his family.
Milk is Big Business. Behind the innocent appearances of the white stuff lies a multi-billion euro industry, which perhaps isn't so innocent…
A look at man's relationship with Dirt. Dirt has given us food, shelter, fuel, medicine, ceramics, flowers, cosmetics and color --everything needed for our survival. For most of the last ten thousand years we humans understood our intimate bond with dirt and the rest of nature. We took care of the soils that took care of us. But, over time, we lost that connection. We turned dirt into something "dirty." In doing so, we transform the skin of the earth into a hellish and dangerous landscape for all life on earth. A millennial shift in consciousness about the environment offers a beacon of hope - and practical solutions.
For decades, migrant workers have worked the fields of Immokalee, harvesting tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, oranges and other produce that is then shipped across the United States of America. Many of the workers are undocumented, and attempting to keep their jobs even as federal migration crackdowns hover over the town. The Fields of Immokalee film follows the daily lives of tomato workers, from the 5:00am trips to the parking lot in hopes of finding day labor, to work sessions in the scorching mid-day heat, to child detention centers for migrant youth that have been separated from their families. Via these vignettes, the film offers insight into the most volatile political issue of our time.
In the Sardinian town of Tonara, where the ancient art of crafting cowbells teeters on the edge of extinction, a family battles to preserve their heritage, passing down skills to a new generation while grappling with personal struggles and the pull of modernity. English subtitles.
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Anita Chitaya has a gift: she can help bring abundant food from dead soil, she can make men fight for gender equality, and maybe she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home in Malawi from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real. Traveling from Malawi to California to the White House, she meets climate sceptics and despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions that shape the USA: from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, and to the American exceptionalism that remains a part of the culture. It will take all her skill and experience to help Americans recognise, and free themselves from, a logic that is already destroying the Earth.
This unique recreation of an 18th-century home, in London's Spitalfields, has to be seen to be believed. Dan Cruickshank smells the rotting food and warms his hands by the roaring fires and asks whether this living museum is really more accurate than a National Trust treasure, or just an eccentric one-off from its outlandish Californian creator, the late Dennis Severs. A follow-up of sorts to the 1985 BBC series Ours to Keep episode "Incomers" focused on this residence.