March Community Cinema Events: Dirt Is Your Friend

Throughout the month of March Community Cinema held over 45 free events featuring Dirt! The Movie. Thousands attended the community-building and educational events. Plus, there were the worms, chickens, and microbes. Oh my!

Vandana Shiva - Environmental activist - India

It’s under our feet and under our fingernails, but what is it? And how did it get there? Inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, find out how industrial farming, mining and urban development have led us toward cataclysmic droughts, starvation, floods and climate change. Dirt is a part of everything we eat, drink and breathe. Which is why we should stop treating it like, well…dirt.

One of our most successful events was in a city known more for its concrete than for its dirt. Dirt! The Movie thrilled crowds in New York City’s Central Park. New York City Department of Parks & Recreation is presenting five Independent Lens documentaries this season as part of the Community Cinema line-up. Find out what happened at the event from Christina Dookwah who helped organize the event:

“The screening was packed with people eager to hear from Bill Benenson, co-director and producer of Dirt! The Movie, and William Bryant Logan, founder and president of Urban Arborists, a leading tree care firm and is a certified arborist with the International Society of Arboriculture who is also the author of the book on which the movie was based.”

There are still five chances to catch Dirt! The Movie for free at Community Cinema tonight ion Houston and in a few more locations in April. Read on for more about our exciting events and for more ways to get dirty. › Continue reading

Tags: dirt, earth, earth day, farming, organic, soil

Getting Dirty In St. Louis

Producing Partners are local community organizations that co-present Community Cinema screenings across the country. In St. Louis, MO we partner with KETC9 and The Missouri History Museum. KETC9′s Sydney Meyer describes a recent free event for the film Dirt! The Movie.

“Dirt! The Movie did itself proud – you brought us a jewel of a film!” was only one of the positive reactions from the crowd of over 300 who attended the screening of Dirt! The Movie in St. Louis on March 11.

The night began with a lobby full of enthusiastic “dirt” environmentalists. We had tables of information including the “worm lady”, Missouri Stream Team, Slow Food St. Louis, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, and Operation PayDirt. Resources were given and conversations were exchanged for an hour until finally everyone was ready to see the film. Here’s a taste of the action:

The whole night had a positive, upbeat feel. The panel and audience discussed how healthy eating and living are really guided by our society and we are slowly “getting it”. Evidence of this is in the sheer the number of films with powerful food messages for our communities that have been produced in the last few years.

Missouri is really ahead in “green” gardening supported by churches and neighborhood groups. Farmer’s markets abound here and are expanding all over the city and county. The best reason to buy locally is that the food really tastes better! Freshness does matter. But still it was pointed out, each consumer must do their part and open up pocketbooks and buy good local produce and beef and stop buying cheap, “fast food” meals. Read on to hear a radio clip and  learn more about dirt. › Continue reading

Tags: dirt, farming, Missouri, missouri history museum, st louis

Seattle Really Loves Its Dirt

March in Seattle has historically been notoriously wet and gray. This past Saturday was the perfect cloudless day to enjoy Seattle Center's International Fountain and lawns.

This past Saturday a diverse audience enjoyed part of their day at the free Community Cinema Seattle premiere screening of Dirt! The Movie at Seattle Center. On an unusually gorgeous sunny day in Seattle – especially odd for early March – the audience was eager to discuss what was being done to help Seattle’s ecosystem heal itself and ways they could help. The speakers kept offering to move the discussion out to the sun-drenched lobby, but the entire audience stayed for the entire discussion.  Many stayed to ask questions and the topic quickly turned to chickens and worms, but more on that later.

Our panelists and local event partners are inovators in an already crowded field of bioneers in the Seattle and Puget Sound region. We were so fortunate to be joined by Kathryn A. Gardow, Executive Director of PCC Farmland Trust and Brad Halm, a farmer and co-owner of The Seattle Urban Farm Company, which has garnered quite a bit of press for its creative and friendly approach to urban gardening and farming.

Kathryn started by thanking the audience for showing up on such a beautiful cloudless day. She enjoyed the film and asked for a show hands from the audience if they agreed, and every hand shot up. She went on to explain what PCC Farmland Trust is and what it does. PCC Farmland Trust secures, preserves and stewards threatened farmland in the Pacific Northwest, to ensure that generations of local farmers productively farm it using sustainable, organic growing methods. The Trust takes its mission one step further than most land trusts by working to place farmers on the property, actively producing food for the local community. The PCC Farmland Trust is an independent, community-supported non-profit land trust. It was founded in 1999 by PCC Natural Markets as a separate, non-profit organization. Since inception, the Trust has saved four farms totaling 549 acres. What is now PCC Natural Markets began as a food-buying club of 15 families in 1953. Today, it’s the largest consumer-owned natural food retail co-operative in the United States.

Brad Halm (left) and Kathryn Gardow (right) spoke passionately about organic farming and farmland preservation after the Seattle Premiere of Dirt! The Movie

Brad Halm of The Seattle Urban Farm Company is a native of Ohio. He developed an interest in sustainable agriculture while helping tend a garden with housemates at Denison University. That interest has since grown as he has worked on a number of organic farms in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and was most recently employed as the manager of the Community Supported Agriculture program at Village Acres Farm in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania. The Seattle Urban Farm Company uses only organic methods to manage their  clients’ gardens, so the soil will be healthy and productive for years to come. Vegetables will be free of herbicides, synthetic pesticides, and genetically modified organisms. By bringing farmers into a yard, it helps share the risks of growing food. If the weather is poor, a garden is not as productive as it might otherwise be. If the weather is good, a garden can produce a bumper crop of delectable vegetables. And your chickens and worms can eat the rest, but more on that later. › Continue reading

Tags: chickens, farming, organic, pcc farmland trust, seattle, seattle tilth, seattle urban farm company, worms