The Living Land

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Over many years, our methods of growing food have become ever more mechanized and more complex. At the same time, we’ve lost millions of acres of good soil to pollution, erosion, and an ever growing population. There is now an increasing awareness of the need to change our perceptions about how we grow our food and how we treat the land. This program features four individuals on the frontier of this effort.

JOHN JEAVONS
Founder of Ecology Action and internationally known for his work developing small-scale sustainable food production techniques.

WES JACKSON
Born and raised on the Great Plains, he holds degrees in both botany and genetics. For than 25 years, his Land Institute has been working on a revolutionary concept known as Natural Systems Agriculture to develop perennial grain varieties.

ALICE WATERS
World renowned chef, author, and owner of Chez Panisse restaurant. Established an “Edible Schoolyard” program that involves children in planting, gardening, harvesting, cooking, and eating to instill a sense of the vital relationship of food to their lives.

MAS MASUMOTO
Organic farmer and author of “Epitaph for a Peach” and “Harvest Son,” he grows peaches and grapes on his 80-acre family farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

26 minutes ©1999 Foundation for Global Community

Water - Sacred and Profaned

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“If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water.”
     ~ Loren Eisley

Many documentaries have focused on the various way the Earth’s water has become polluted and profaned. This program esplores the sacred nature of this precious gift which is everywhere, surrounding us, enveloping our lives and those of every other living thing. Without water there would be no plants, no food, no fish, no birds, no people, no life.

Six unique men and women share their experiences and insights about water, the most abundant and fundamental element of the Earth. Throughout the program are images of water in all its forms—clouds, snow, rain, ice, rivers,, lakes and oceans—culminating in a four-minute montage of beauty set to the inspiring music of David Foster.

LINDA HOGAN
Award-winning poet and novelist with roots in the Native American tradition.

ROBERT HASS
Pulitzer Prize winning poet, also served as Poet Laureate of the United States and created the “River of Words” project.

SUSAN ZWINGER
Award-winning author and naturalist.

COLIN FLETCHER
Author of “River: From Source to Sea” which
Chronicles his six-month solo journey, at age 67, down the entire 1700-mile length of the Colorado River.

JENNIFER GREENE
Director of the Water Research Institute at Blue Hill in Maine.

DAVID WHYTE
Poet and lecturer throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

26 minutes ©1998 Foundation for Global Community

Children and Nature: Awakening a Sense of Wonder

Click To Play   Dr. Jane Goodall believes it is essential that parents and other mentors of children guide them to make meaningful connections with the natural world. To help accomplish this, she has initiated a program called Roots and Shoots, now in 29 countries. Joining her in expressing the importance of enabling children to form a close relationship with nature are Dr. Sylvia Earle, world-renowned marine biologist, Lee Cole, naturalist and children’s guide at Hidden Villa Farm and Wilderness Preserve in California, and Jeff Rutherford, director of the Marine Research Institute, a ship and shore program for children on San Francisco Bay.

Narrated by Peter Coyote
Music by Paul Lloyd Warner

26 minutes ©1997 Foundation for Global Community

Images for Reflection

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This video is designed as an inspirational tool for individual reflection or for use in a conference or discussion group setting.

Images for Reflection contains seven segments: The Mystery and Magic of Water (3:40), Southwest Meditation (3:45), Our Nourishing Earth (2:30), A Day at the Wetlands (6:00), The Song That Waits to be Learned (5:15), Kinship of All Life (5:00), and Earth’s Children (5:30).

31 minutes © 2004

Art of the Wild

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They are following in the footsteps of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman…in the tradition of John Muir and Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold and Wallace Stegner. They are the next generation of nature writers and poets, giving voice to the living Earth of which we are all a part.

Interviews with 14 writers of prose and poetry during the time they were serving as faculty at the ART OF THE WILD conference in Squaw Valley, California. They express their background, philosophy, and deep devotion to the land and all its inhabitants.

Francisco X. Alarcon, John Daniel, Jane Hirshfield, Garrett Hongo, Pam Houston, William Kittredge, Sandra McPherson, Gary Paul Nabhan, Louis Owens, Pattiann Rogers, Annick Smith, Gary Snyder, Luci Tapahonso, Terry Tempest Williams

60 minutes © 1996 Foundation for Global Community

A Sense of Place

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What is the appropriate relationship between humans and the whole living system? In the act of honoring the connection and dependency that we have with the whole web of life lies the possibility of a deep and abiding communion. If, as author Wendell Berry has written, “you can’t know who you are until you know where you are,” then the process of discovering and achieving a sense of place may be the most important step in our life’s journey.

This program is based on interviews with five people who are exploring this frontier: Kirkpatrick Sale, John and Nancy Jack Todd, Paul Winter, and Jeff Bercuvitz.

29 minutes ©1994 Foundation for Global Community

The Unfolding Story

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We live in a time when there is a great need for a story that has the power to connect all peoples. all cultures, all races and religions, a story that will communicate about the living universe which is the context for all life.

From ancient times there have been storytellers passing on wisdom to those whose footsteps would follow in the path of life. In this program scientists, authors, religious leaders, native people, and other visionaries relate the story that is now unfolding of an interconnected, interdependent living universe.

The Storytellers: Thomas Berry, John B. Cobb Jr., Timothy Ferris,
Miriam Therese MacGillis, Theodore Roszak, Elisabet Sahtouris, Audrey Shenandoah, Charlene Spretnak, David Suzuki, Tom Van Sant, Edward O. Wilson

Narrated by Mike Farrell

29 minutes © 1993 Foundation for Global Community