Seeds of Hope

The drought in the American West is predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years. Join five Academy Award-winning filmmakers as they explore the environmental crisis of our time and how to fix it before it's too late.

In such a difficult situation in Hong Kong agriculture, to local farmers, before expecting a good harvest, they have to first overcome the problems caused by agricultural policy implementation, land policy and urban development in Hong Kong. This film is about three middle-aged local organic farmers and their farming stories: A peasant leader, who faces political infiltration in organization, decides to quit and focuses on his farming; a rural woman who fights against North East New Territories development plan and taking care of her sick husband at the same time, decides to combine family life with her home farming; a sixty years old truck driver who decides to have a career change, trying to live a fearless and free life as a farmer.

This film about agricultural advances in the USSR was meant to serve as a teaching aid. Featuring documentary footage and animation.

During the summer of 2018, hundreds of earthquakes shook the summit of Kiilauea, sparking the volcano's largest eruption in 200 years. To some, it was a disaster. To others, it was the goddess Pele's way of creating new aina (land). The Hawaiian peoples' resilience and cultural unity is a lesson in the true spirit of Aloha.

A global nightmare is unfolding as farmers and scientists stand at a crossroads questioning the impacts of pesticides and herbicides on human health. At the center of this controversy is glyphosate, the primary active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world. Glyphosate was recently identified as a possible cancer causing agent and is now found in breast milk, baby food, wine and 80% of food grown in the United States. Why is glyphosate filtering into so many facets of our daily lives? And why are countries banning glyphosate while the United States uses more of it than any other country in the world? Children Of The Vine will peel back the curtain on the flawed regulatory practices that are causing more harm than good to public health while also revealing the scary science behind toxic farming practices. In the end, this solution driven documentary will highlight more sustainable large scale farming practices capable of feeding the world.

In 2001, Jimmy Wales published the first article on Wikipedia, a collaborative effort that began with a promise: to democratize the spreading of knowledge, monopolized by the elites for centuries. But is Wikipedia really a utopia come true?

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.

In this short documentary from the Canada Vignettes series, a Saskatchewan grain elevator is moved across the snow-covered prairie to a new home after nearly a half-century of use. The film follows the lifting and transporting of the 9-storey, 200-ton structure, and examines the feelings of the people as they witness the final passing of their town's one and only grain elevator.

American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawai’i shows the survival of the hula as a renaissance continues to grow beyond the islands. With the cost of living in Hawai'i estimated at 27 percent higher than the continental United States, large numbers of Hawaiians have left the islands to pursue professional and educational opportunities. Today, with more Native Hawaiians living on the mainland than in the state of Hawai'i, the hula has traveled with them. From the suburbs of Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area, the largest Hawaiian communities have settled in California, and the hula continues to connect communities to their heritage on distant shores.

A story of the LGBT struggle from the 1960s to the present, after the Stonewall riot sparked the militant action in New York that was to spread around the world. From San Francisco to Paris via Amsterdam, between the first Gay Pride, the election of Harvey Milk, the French "decriminalization", the AIDS epidemic and the first homosexual marriages, these few decades of struggle are embodied through numerous testimonies of actors and actresses of this revolution rainbow.

This film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent ten years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.

Examines the conflicts, politics, economics, and groundwater depletion in the High Plains region, with a focus on the Ogallala Aquifer. Farmers and communities survive on the precious waters of the Aquifer, yet it is being depleted at alarming rates.

Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.

As society tackles the problem of feeding our expanding population safely and sustainably, a schism has arisen between scientists and consumers, motivated by fear and distrust. Food Evolution, narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, explores the polarized debate surrounding GMOs. Looking at the real-world application of food science in the past and present, the film argues for sound science and open-mindedness in a culture that increasingly shows resistance to both.