Dirt! The Movie
“Floods, drought, climate change, even war are all directly related to the way we are treating dirt.”
DIRT! The Movie–directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow–takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth’s most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility–from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.
The opening scenes of the film dive into the wonderment of the soil. Made from the same elements as the stars, plants and animals, and us, “dirt is very much alive.” Though, in modern industrial pursuits and clamor for both profit and natural resources, our human connection to and respect for soil has been disrupted. “Drought, climate change, even war are all directly related to the way we are treating dirt.”
DIRT! the Movie–narrated by Jaime Lee Curtis–brings to life the environmental, economic, social and political impact that the soil has. It shares the stories of experts from all over the world who study and are able to harness the beauty and power of a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with soil.
DIRT! the Movie is simply a movie about dirt. The real change lies in our notion of what dirt is. The movie teaches us: “When humans arrived 2 million years ago, everything changed for dirt. And from that moment on, the fate of dirt and humans has been intimately linked.” But more than the film and the lessons that it teaches, DIRT the Movie is a call to action.
“The only remedy for disconnecting people from the natural world is connecting them to it again.”
What we’ve destroyed, we can heal.
Roll Out Cowboy
Chris “Sandman” Sand is a rappin’ cowboy from Dunn Center, North Dakota (population: 120 and shrinking). He drives a semi, plays the guitar and raps. He looks like Woody Guthrie but sings like LL Cool J. Roll Out, Cowboy follows the 39-year-old country/hip-hop musician as he tours the American West during the 2008 Presidential election. Small town America isn’t as conservative as we think.
His tour bus is broken, he bought his house for a thousand bucks, and the small farming town in which he lives is disappearing faster with each passing year. Roll Out, Cowboy’s Chris Sand is the face of the dying American West. Except for one thing: He raps.
The Woody Guthrie protégé looks like a cowboy, talks like a cowboy, but writes songs like LL Cool J. When hip hop music hit the airwaves of the North Dakota badlands, where Sand grew up, he learned to rap and rhyme to the pulse of baling machines and irrigation pumps. The result? A music fusion in the raw—country/hip hop/folk/rap/cowboy. Whatever you call it, it’s unique, fresh, sexy, and distinctly western.
Roll Out, Cowboy follows Sandman the rappin’ cowboy as he embarks on a national tour during the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. He travels from red state to blue and back again; blending discordant music genres into a style uniquely his own. Through him we see a part of America that remains immune to marketing campaigns, record labels, and consumerist politicking; as if it were the truth. We witness band break-ups, small town groupies—even a brief flirtation with commercial truck-driving, when a particularly impoverished Sand needs to make ends meet.
This is not the romanticized, Roy Rogers version of the American frontier. This is Sandman. The cowboy who raps.
ArtsWells: The Festival of All Things Art
Two years in the making, the documentary of the 2008 Swell. Independent filmmaker, Dan Williams and interviewer Carmen Mutschele brought their team to the 2008 ArtsWells Festival and did a host of interviews and live tapings. Over the last two years Dan teamed up with videographer Jason Beauchene who has now edited it into a 60 minute documentary featuring interviews and performances by Shane Koyczan, Don Alder, Green Tara, Linda McRae, Kevin Kane, Yael Wand, Miss Emily Brown, Jarimba, Blue Island Trio and more.
TWO BIT OPER- EH?- SHUN
For 18 months songstress Onalea Gilbertson gathered vivid tales from Canada’s largest homeless shelter, the Calgary Drop-In Centre and teamed with composer Marcel Bergmann to create a sweeping composition discussing homelessness and addiction. This recording of the world premiere at Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo features the award winning Land’s End Chamber Ensemble, The Drop In Centre Singers, soloists and choir.
Family Stones
Incarcerated at twelve for a crime her mother committed, Sapana’s story is one that has been shared by thousands of Nepali youth. Shunned by her community and father, she and her brother accompanied their mother to prison after her arrest for trafficking girls into the sex trade in India.
Indoctrinated at 14 by Maoist recruiters, Chandra became a messenger for the Maoist rebels in their uprising agauinst the government, an act considered treason by the Nepali army who arrested him….
Reel Youth, in partnership with Prisoners Assistance Nepal (PA Nepal), is proud to present a touching and uplifting film about seven remarkable Nepali children and their struggle to connect to a society that relinquished them.
Filmed in part by the youth themselves, ‘FAMILY STONES’ showcases the work of Canadian Zachary Bartonas the Directer of Kamala Foundation, and it’s sister organization PA Nepal. It is a testament to resilience and the individuals who continue to rescue children from the Nepal’s prisons.
Scored with songs by the youth of PA Nepal, and violist Christien Lein, the result is a film that is much like the children themselves: captivating, ebullient and memorable.
This film was produced with the financial support of the Canadian Government through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
Island Mountain Arts and Reel Youth present the 2010 Video Production Day Camp Films
For four years now, Island Mountain Arts has been partnering with Reel Youth to give up-and-coming filmmakers to write, produce, direct, and often star in their own films. This year’s films include “Sacrificial Ignorance”, “Pressure”, and the haunting “Beavers”. Special Thank You to Mark Vonesch, film maker and visual artist and the Founder and Director of Reel Youth. He has made over 200 films with young people over the last six years, which have been screened in film festivals across North America, broadcast on television and distributed online.