Politics and ‘Dirt! The Movie’

2 by Timothy Hurst on April 20, 2010

Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV shows how he likes to taste the dirt at vineyards n a scene from Dirt! The Movie.

No matter who they have screened the movie for, the makers of the documentary film, Dirt! The Movie, the take-home message has been that dirt is important--as if you couldn't tell that by the title.

Recently I had a chance to speak with Gene Rosow, the co-director and producer of Dirt! The Movie, which premiers tonight, April 20, on PBS' Independent Lens, about the documentary and he said they "set out to make a film that would appeal to arange of audience ages interests."

In screenings for a diverse collection of audiences, from the European Parliament to schoolchildren in Salt Lake City during the Sundance Film Festival, Rosow said the whole idea has been to "get people to think about this problem in a different way." And getting people interested in protecting something that may seem on its surface as mundane as dirt can't be easy.

"This is a living breating matrix of life on terrestrial earth," said Rosow who said he hoped the film could inspire not only intrigue but also action. "In the case of the EU," he added, "that means policy, passing laws."

One of the major policy implications Rosow did touch on with me was the idea of carbon sequestration and how good soil can be a powerful carbon sink. In terms of U.S. policy, Rosow said he hopes to help elucidate "the link between soil and climate changes in terms of upcoming legislation and what we can do about it."

As a viewer I thought Rosow and his team did good work with a topic that could potentially be quite difficult to inspire interest in. And to make the film both accessible for children as well as intellectually stimulating for those with a greater knowledge of the ecological problems surrounding dirt is no easy task, but one that they certainly took on with vigor.

Narrated by actor Jamie Lee Curtis and featuring well known environmental activists and thinkers like Vandana Shiva, Wangaria Mathai, David Orr, as well as some less-likely characters like Wine Library TV and social media phenomenon, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dirt! The Movie was an official Sundance Film Festival Selection and premiers tonight on PBS’ Independent Lens at 10pm nationwide, but check your local listings to be certain.

I also have two DVDs and some Dirt! schwag to dole out to my faithful ecopolitology readers and will draw two names out of a hat on Earth Day, to win a copy of the DVD. Just leave a comment below and express your interest.

In the meantime, watch the trailer and enjoy:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8_dN5YWnyc[/youtube]

Alex

I am interested in winning a copy of this movie on DVD. However I would much prefer the HP computer you are also giving away.
W. Robert Black

I missed the movie aired on our local e-tv tonight, but reviews seem to indicate it’s focus is upon ‘politics’ being the cure for the malady, while in fact, it has been it’s cause. Witness, that the epic 1938 Yearbook of Agriculture entitled “Soils and Men” devoted less than 25 of its more than 1200 pages specifically to a section called “The Soil and the Law”; today, this would be reversed (and no doubt ‘politics’ would be credited with keeping things from being worse). And that section closed with a warning of the ills that would follow if the relation between soils and men became more politicized. It was not unlike Eisenhower’s farewell address warning of the economic chaos that an entrenched intellectual-military-industrial complex (although little is made of the first) would bring. That Yearbook was edited and written largely by scientists. It was addressed to farmers. Neither of these groups have much perceived need to heed such warnings, for both live by a common creed, “Nature, to be controlled, must be obeyed”; they were for the rest of us, of whom few have paid attention.

I became aware of the problem at an early age by having a father (a farmer) who seemed preoccupied with turning “dirt” back into soil, and I focused upon it in my early teens when I prepared a competitive 4-H club presentation entitled, “Your Three Acres” . Some 20 years later, I heeded Eisenhower’s warning when I quit my career (government sponsored – politicized) as a laboratory soil scientist/geologist after realizing there was no alternative to being “part of the problem or part of the solution”. More recently, I have returned to my roots and have, intellectually at least, dwelled upon the ‘problem’. Thus, I too, would like to win a copy of “Dirt. The Movie” for my reference library.