Six Inches of Soil

The nomad garden

The Nomad Garden is an ode to the impossible. A young Sahrawi refugee shows how he grows organic vegetables and herbs in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, overcoming challenges like the lack of water, extreme temperatures and a barren soil.

The Fields of Immokalee

For decades, migrant workers have worked the fields of Immokalee, harvesting tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, oranges and other produce that is then shipped across the United States of America. Many of the workers are undocumented, and attempting to keep their jobs even as federal migration crackdowns hover over the town. The Fields of Immokalee film follows the daily lives of tomato workers, from the 5:00am trips to the parking lot in hopes of finding day labor, to work sessions in the scorching mid-day heat, to child detention centers for migrant youth that have been separated from their families. Via these vignettes, the film offers insight into the most volatile political issue of our time.

Variations on How to Farm a City

Sprout. In the vacant lots against the hammering of buildings always under construction, between walls of granite, cement and sheet metal with rust, moss and cats; on the hillside between the train and the river, next to the traffic on the highway, facing the subway, vegetable gardens sprout. In this city, the choreography of ancient gestures of cultivating the land is repeated day after day, without fail. Sowing, digging, harvesting, watering, eating, talking, resting and returning the next day. The longest day of the year brings S. João and nobody goes to bed, but when the sun rises, the discreet gestures of resistance will restart.

Sleep Furiously

Set in a small farming community in mid Wales, a place where Koppel's parents - both refugees - found a home. This is a landscape and population that is changing rapidly as small scale agriculture is disappearing and the generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out. Much influenced by his conversations with the writer Peter Handke, the film maker leads us on a poetic and profound journey into a world of endings and beginnings; a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire.

Die Bio-Revolution - Die Karriere der ökologischen Landwirtschaft

Half a Summer on Waterpenny Farm

24 years ago, Nick's parents started a small vegetable farm in Sperryville, Virginia, and he spent his childhood among the farm's fields and flowers. This summer, Nick is back at the farm to visit for a month and a half. And he's trying to make a movie about it.

King Corn

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.

An Eastern Market

Documentary detailing a farmer’s visit to the market in Rawalpindi.

The Milk System

Milk is Big Business. Behind the innocent appearances of the white stuff lies a multi-billion euro industry, which perhaps isn't so innocent…

After Winter, Spring

Family farmers in southwest France practice an ancestral way of life under threat in a world increasingly dominated by large-scale industrial agriculture.

The Ants and the Grasshopper

Anita Chitaya has a gift: she can help bring abundant food from dead soil, she can make men fight for gender equality, and maybe she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home in Malawi from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real. Traveling from Malawi to California to the White House, she meets climate sceptics and despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions that shape the USA: from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, and to the American exceptionalism that remains a part of the culture. It will take all her skill and experience to help Americans recognise, and free themselves from, a logic that is already destroying the Earth.

Dirt! The Movie

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.

From the Black Earth

From the Black Earth is a collaboration between Bristol based company Cables and Cameras, and a local farmer Humphrey Lloyd. Employing both lucid speakers and poetic camera work, the film poses stark questions such as; why does food poverty exist in a nation of plenty, and why are people of colour so under represented not only in our countryside and farms, but in the environmental movement more broadly? By giving a platform to people of colour who are connecting with nature and working the land, this short documentary starts to unpick these questions...

Dominion

Exposing the dark underbelly of modern animal agriculture through drones, hidden & handheld cameras, the feature-length film explores the morality and validity of our dominion over the animal kingdom.

Tending to the Soul

In rural Alabama, Freedom Farm Azul stands as a sanctuary for nourishment, education, and healing. Through intimate interviews and lush imagery, this poetic documentary explores how land stewardship becomes an act of resistance, restoration, and collective care.

The Last Word in Chickens

This 10-minute short documentary exploring the shifting state of the American poultry industry was preserved in 2015 from an original nitrate print. More information is available on the film's page in the National Film Preservation Foundation's website, where this version can be found featuring original music by Michael D. Mortilla.

The Agro Rebel: Permaculture in the Salzburg Alps

Sepp Holzer explains some of the innovative, labour-saving agricultural techniques he applies at his farm in the Eastern Alps of Salzburg, Austria.

The First Season

Paul and Phyllis van Amburgh, believing that a small, family farm is the best place to raise their children, take their life savings and buy a defunct dairy. With three children and a fourth on the way and armed only with their principles and determination, they fight to defy the odds as they become full time farmers. THE FIRST SEASON, through an intimate, cinema verite style, bears witness to the Van Amburgh's struggle as they fight against relentless toil, financial ruin and the harsh reality of diary farming to achieve their version of the American dream.

Riða

A documentary about the history of scrapie in Iceland.

Desert strawberries

Sahrawi artist and visual poet Mohamed Sleiman Labat follows the story of the emerging phenomenon of small scale family gardens in his local community in the Hamada Desert. The film features the story of four families in Samara Camp with small scale gardens, their practices and the knowledge they develop as part of their practices in the garden. The camps are located in a very harsh environment with extreme climate conditions, and the Sahrawi are still dependent on international food aid.