DIRT! The Movie
Feature Film Documentary
(USA, 2009, 85 mins)
Hawaii Premiere
Directed By: Bill Benenson,Gene Rosow
Narrator: Jamie Lee Curtis
Executive Producers: Laurie Benenson, Bill Benenson
Producers: Eleonore Dailly, Gene Rosow
Original Music: Jorge Corante
Executive Producers: Laurie Benenson, Bill Benenson
Producers: Eleonore Dailly, Gene Rosow
Original Music: Jorge Corante
This film does not talk dirty. It talks Dirt.
And there's nothing dirty about Dirt. It is a living, breathing skin that thinly coats the most hospitable parts of planet Earth, and it teems with life. You could find tens of billions of microorganisms in a single handful of the stuff.
Call it soil if you prefer. It's full of spores and fungi and mycelia, nematodes and springtails and worms. It is life making itself anew from dead tissue and crumbling stone.
Walt Whitman wrote:
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person-yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves.
[And so on.]
Whitman would have loved watching this movie because it is entirely about beholding compost. He understood that soil is the repository of life. Or, as Gary Vaynerchuk, the founder of The Wine Library, says in this film: With the amount of species that live in a teaspoon of dirt, I think it's very obvious dirt might be more alive than we are.
Joining him in this celebration of fundamental matter are urban arborist Bill Logan, physicist Vandana Shiva, also Carlo Petrini the founder of the Slow Food Movement, Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai who founded the Green Belt Movement, Tree People founder Andy Lipkis, and Berkeley restaurateur Alice Waters, who created the Edible Schoolyard movement.
The problem, of course, is that human beings have been bad to the dirt. We have scalped it and pulverized it to the state of vanishing in the wind. We've covered it with pavement. The images of dirt-abuse in this film are truly horrifying.
And yet this film insists on seeing the positive-villages that have stood up against corporations to defend their soil, scientists who are finding in dirt solutions for global warming and human diseases, and prison inmates who find inner peace through horticulture.
Inspired by William Bryant Logan's acclaimed book Dirt, The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, this film gets to a humble but fundamental truth and could well change the way you look at the ground under your shoes. Little wonder it was nominated for nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
After all, don't forget: In the biblical book Genesis, God grabs a handful of dirt and breathes life into it. The result is a man called Adam whose name means dirt or clay. No matter what your religion might be, this particular poetic image is universally valid.
We survive on the fertile power of fresh water and dirt. All other measurements of wealth are illusions.
And there's nothing dirty about Dirt. It is a living, breathing skin that thinly coats the most hospitable parts of planet Earth, and it teems with life. You could find tens of billions of microorganisms in a single handful of the stuff.
Call it soil if you prefer. It's full of spores and fungi and mycelia, nematodes and springtails and worms. It is life making itself anew from dead tissue and crumbling stone.
Walt Whitman wrote:
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person-yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves.
[And so on.]
Whitman would have loved watching this movie because it is entirely about beholding compost. He understood that soil is the repository of life. Or, as Gary Vaynerchuk, the founder of The Wine Library, says in this film: With the amount of species that live in a teaspoon of dirt, I think it's very obvious dirt might be more alive than we are.
Joining him in this celebration of fundamental matter are urban arborist Bill Logan, physicist Vandana Shiva, also Carlo Petrini the founder of the Slow Food Movement, Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai who founded the Green Belt Movement, Tree People founder Andy Lipkis, and Berkeley restaurateur Alice Waters, who created the Edible Schoolyard movement.
The problem, of course, is that human beings have been bad to the dirt. We have scalped it and pulverized it to the state of vanishing in the wind. We've covered it with pavement. The images of dirt-abuse in this film are truly horrifying.
And yet this film insists on seeing the positive-villages that have stood up against corporations to defend their soil, scientists who are finding in dirt solutions for global warming and human diseases, and prison inmates who find inner peace through horticulture.
Inspired by William Bryant Logan's acclaimed book Dirt, The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, this film gets to a humble but fundamental truth and could well change the way you look at the ground under your shoes. Little wonder it was nominated for nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
After all, don't forget: In the biblical book Genesis, God grabs a handful of dirt and breathes life into it. The result is a man called Adam whose name means dirt or clay. No matter what your religion might be, this particular poetic image is universally valid.
We survive on the fertile power of fresh water and dirt. All other measurements of wealth are illusions.
www.dirtthemovie.org
Not yet MPAA rated.
Not yet MPAA rated.
Screening Schedule
Sat, Jun 20th 8:00pm
SandDance- Wailea Beach
SandDance- Wailea Beach
FREE
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