Plant This Movie 2014
Distributed by The Video Project, PO Box 411376, San Francisco, CA 94141-1376; 800-475-2638
Produced by Karney Hatch
Directed by Karney Hatch
DVD, color, 83 min.
Middle School - General Adult
Urban Agriculture, Environmentalism, Sustainable Living, Agriculture, Green Movement
Date Entered: 09/24/2015
Reviewed by Sara Parme, Digital Services Librarian, Daniel A. Reed Library, SUNY FredoniaPlant This Movie aims to explore the evolution of our relationship with food and the wasted space and resource that is the 21st century lawn. This documentary is lot about returning. A return to victory gardens and having a closer relationship to the food we eat. A return to health, community, and nature as an answer to a number of social ills.
Plant This Movie is one of many similar documentaries on urban farming. (See Edible City (2014), Growing Cities: A Film about Urban Farming in America (2013), Brooklyn Farmer (2014), The Suzuki Diaries: Future City (2013), and Voices of Transition (2014)). Plant This Movie has a few new things to say. Namely, taking the past mistakes of the Green Movement and improving upon them. Many agricultural nonprofits, including one highlighted in the documentary, fail for lack of funding. Plant This Movie proposes that sustainability efforts be run like a business. But the film only devotes a fraction of the movie to this. While this aspirational film travels all over the world (Cuba, Calcutta, New Orleans) to explore what the U.S. and China can learn from developing areas, it feels longer than its running time. And other documentaries on the same subject are livelier.