WILD PLANTS
A film by Nicolas Humbert
2016, 108 minutes
2016, 108 minutes
No. 066
Documentary
Documentary
Description
Urban gardeners in post-industrial Detroit. Milo Yellow Hair and his agriculture project in South Dakota. The rebel gardener Maurice Maggi who changed the face of Zurich with his wild plantings. The innovative agricultural cooperative “Jardins de Cocagne” in Geneva. Through a series of interconnected portraits, Wild Plants offers a vivid appreciation of a burgeoning movement, of its key players, their ideas and motivations.
On the Pine Ridge Reservation, diabetes is rampant and there are few grocery stores. Most people can only afford an unhealthy diet, with few fresh fruits and vegetables. Started by Milo Yellow Hair, the Slim Buttes Agricultural Program is a community effort to increase local food production, improve the nutritional quality of food, and promote self-reliance among the Oglala Lakota.
For the last 30 years, Maurice Maggi has been secretly beautifying Zürich by planting flowers on unused land. His cloak-and-dagger operations yield extraordinary guerrilla gardens.
The term 'wild plants' is a reference to vegetation that seeds itself in fallow and abandoned land and creates new habitats. This documentary is a profile of the people who make this happen; activists who are creating their own botanical utopias and are becoming an inspiration to others.
On the Pine Ridge Reservation, diabetes is rampant and there are few grocery stores. Most people can only afford an unhealthy diet, with few fresh fruits and vegetables. Started by Milo Yellow Hair, the Slim Buttes Agricultural Program is a community effort to increase local food production, improve the nutritional quality of food, and promote self-reliance among the Oglala Lakota.
For the last 30 years, Maurice Maggi has been secretly beautifying Zürich by planting flowers on unused land. His cloak-and-dagger operations yield extraordinary guerrilla gardens.
The term 'wild plants' is a reference to vegetation that seeds itself in fallow and abandoned land and creates new habitats. This documentary is a profile of the people who make this happen; activists who are creating their own botanical utopias and are becoming an inspiration to others.
Festivals
* Official Selection, Visions du Reel
Reviews
"A fascinating and aesthetically poetic film in which the beauty of little things is turned into poetry.... With great respect and discretion, Humbert brings us a series of moving and aesthetically sublime portrayals of this group of idealists." - CineEuropa
