Havråfilmen

The horses in Denys Colomb Daunant’s dream poem are the white beasts of the marshlands of the Camargue in South West France. Daunant was haunted by these creatures. His obsession was first visualized when he wrote the autobiographical script for Albert Lamorisse’s award-winning 1953 film White Mane. In this short the beauty of the horses is captured with a variety of film techniques and by Jacques Lasry’s beautiful electronic score.

One of the great pleasures of working on LOOK & SEE was collaborating with artist and wood engraver Wesley W. Bates. Wesley's work has long accompanied Wendell Berry's poetry. When he agreed to provide original images for our film we were truly thrilled. Because each image involves such painstaking effort, we asked Wesley to film a block from start to finish. At two hours long, the video is a distillation of three days of his effort. And Wesley provided over ten such engravings along with the film's signature block of Wendell Berry.

Is your hedge thin and straggly? Don't worry, help is at hand.

The people, the scenery and the industrial traditions of the Stroud valley and the growth of the woollen industry.

In rural Kosovo, identical houses are built for family members working abroad, in the hope that they will one day return to settle in their old homeland.

In barely a century, French peasants have seen their world profoundly turned upside down. While they once made up the vast majority of the country, today they are only a tiny minority and are faced with an immense challenge: to continue to feed France. From the figure of the simple tenant farmer described by Emile Guillaumin at the beginning of the 20th century to the heavy toll paid by peasants during the Great War, from the beginnings of mechanization in the inter-war period to the ambivalent figure of the peasant under the Occupation, From the unbridled race to industrialization in post-war France to the realization that it is now necessary to rethink the agricultural model and invent the agriculture of tomorrow, the film looks back at the long march of French peasants.

The traditional healers in the Swiss and French mountains.

"A Home On The Range" tells the little-known story of Jews who fled the pogroms and hardships of Eastern Europe and traveled to California to become chicken ranchers. Even in the sweatshops of New York they heard about Petaluma where the Jews were not the shopkeepers and the professionals, they were the farmers. Meet this fractious, idealistic, intrepid group of Eastern European Jews and their descendants as they confront obstacles of language and culture on their journey towards becoming Americans. Jack London, California vigilantes, McCarthyism, the Cold War and agribusiness all come to life in this quintessentially American story of how a group of immigrants found their new home, a home on the range.

Traditions during Easter holidays in the remote village of Grešnica. The film was a research project of the newly opened Ethnological Museum to preserve the disappearing customs at least on film for future generations.

A stunning and intimate portrait of the Arhuaco indigenous community in Colombia. In 1990, in a celebrated BBC documentary, the Arhuaco made contact with the outside world to warn industrialized societies of the potentially catastrophic future facing the planet if we don’t change our ways. Now, three decades later, with the advances of audio/visual technology, we go back to the Snowy Peaks of Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria to illuminate their ethos against the backdrop of an increasingly fragile world.

The agriculture reforming process, after the 1974 revolution, is seen through an analysis of the social structures and class struggles of the Portuguese society.

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

A film record of M.E.T.E.I. (Medical Expedition to Easter Island), one of the most unusual scientific enquiries ever launched, headed by a McGill University research team. While the film is concerned mainly with the physical condition of Easter Islanders, it also provides glimpses of island activities, a village wedding, and the famous long-faced stone sculptures.

A look at man's relationship with Dirt. Dirt has given us food, shelter, fuel, medicine, ceramics, flowers, cosmetics and color --everything needed for our survival. For most of the last ten thousand years we humans understood our intimate bond with dirt and the rest of nature. We took care of the soils that took care of us. But, over time, we lost that connection. We turned dirt into something "dirty." In doing so, we transform the skin of the earth into a hellish and dangerous landscape for all life on earth. A millennial shift in consciousness about the environment offers a beacon of hope - and practical solutions.

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

Young Masters is an original series commissioned by NOWNESS China focusing on traditional Chinese cultures, and how they continue to be defined by a new generation of the country's youth. High above the clouds in a village in Mao County in Sichuan Prefecture, a post-90’s generation of young cultural guardians work to uphold the values and traditions of ancient Qiang culture. These cultural guardians, known as a ‘Shibi’, remain especially vital for a culture whose knowledge and language exist merely through practice and in sound, and without script. The role of a Shibi involves that of a priest, alongside folk rap, singing, and dance performances, amongst others. As a result, Qiang people have endowed them with a sacred status, believing that they possess a psychic power.