The First Friday Film Series, hosted by Grayson LandCare & Church of the Good Shepherd brings documentary films to the public, complete with popcorn and panel discussions afterward.
First Fridays at 7:00 pm, April through August at Church of the Good Shepherd: 9441 Grayson Pkwy, Galax.
April 5th
Symbiotic Earth
Symbiotic Earth explores the life and ideas of scientific rebel Lynn Margulis who challenged entrenched theories of male-dominated science. As a young scientist in the 1960s, Margulis was ridiculed when she first proposed that symbiosis – when organisms live and work together — was a key driver of evolution, but she persisted. Through numerous collaborations, she caused a seismic shift in our understanding of life.
Margulis’ symbiotic narrative presents an alternative to the destructive worldview that has led to climate change and extreme capitalism. With James Lovelock, she developed the Gaia Theory that all life is interconnected and interdependent. Her vision offers bold insights into health, society, and nature, and inspires creative approaches to our pressing environmental and social crises.
May 3rd
Seed: The Untold Story
Few things on Earth are as miraculous and vital as seeds. Worshipped and treasured since the dawn of humankind. SEED: The Untold Story follows passionate seed keepers protecting our 12,000-year-old food legacy. In the last century, 94% of our seed varieties have disappeared. As biotech chemical companies control the majority of our seeds, farmers, scientists, lawyers, and indigenous seed keepers fight a David and Goliath battle to defend the future of our food. In a harrowing and heartening story, these reluctant heroes rekindle a lost connection to our most treasured resource and revive a culture connected to seeds. SEED features Vandana Shiva, Dr. Jane Goodall, Andrew Kimbrell, Winona Laduke, and Raj Patel.
June 7th
ANTHROPOCENE: THE HUMAN EPOCH
A cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet, ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch is four years in the making feature documentary film from the multiple-award-winning team of Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky.
Third in a trilogy that includes Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013), the film follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group who, after nearly 10 years of research, are arguing that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century, because of profound and lasting human changes to the Earth.
From concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60% of the mainland coast, to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, to psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s Ural Mountains, to metal festivals in the closed city of Norilsk, to the devastated Great Barrier Reef in Australia and surreal lithium evaporation ponds in the Atacama desert, the filmmakers have traversed the globe using high end production values and state of the art camera techniques to document evidence and experience of human planetary domination.
July 5th
Earth Seasoned #GapYear
Earth Seasoned…#GapYear is the inspiring story of five young urban women who spend a gap year between high school and college living semi-primitively in a remote mountainside wilderness in Oregon. Told mainly through the story of Tori Davis, a teenager with learning difficulties, the film chronicles the group’s four seasons in the woods as part of the Caretaker nature program. As the seasons succeed, the group has to adapt to what the wilderness provides and to what it withholds.
Through lyrical live action footage and smartly paced animation, the film reveals how separately and together the girls learn ancient skills of craftsmanship and teamwork and forge deep powers of resilience and self-reliance. Earth Seasoned has essential messages about talent, compassion, and community and about the real conditions for human flourishing.
August 2nd
Grow Food
Documentary filmmakers seek to charge a global movement with one big idea: growing food can fix a majority of the world’s problems. GROW FOOD, a powerful story about local heroes bringing abundance to their communities will inspire and activate the multitude to join in and be the change we wish to see in the world. It is a documentary about you, me, and the current state of our planet – but most importantly it is about solutions – the solution – Grow Food. It may sound strange, but it turns out the solution to most of our environmental and health problems is right beneath our feet – soil. Did you know that a large portion of the CO2 in the atmosphere actually came from the soil? Did you know that plants grown and managed in a biologically conscious way can put that very carbon back into the soil?!
By growing healthy food, which creates healthy soil, we are able to decrease carbon in the atmosphere! What happens when plants and microbes build healthy soil? We have more resilient food systems, cleaner water, cleaner air, a better world. Not to mention fewer toxins in our food and environment! One simple act for so many benefits on so many levels!
Independently filmed over the course of a year, GROW FOOD takes an unprecedented and intimate look at how people in the movement are bringing healthy food to their community. It is not only a deeply personal story but one with real-world utility for communities struggling with food security and low food quality worldwide.
September 6th
What is Democracy?
Coming at a moment of profound political and social crisis, What Is Democracy? reflects on a word we too often take for granted.
Director Astra Taylor’s idiosyncratic, philosophical journey spans millennia and continents: from ancient Athens’ groundbreaking experiment in self-government to capitalism’s roots in medieval Italy; from modern-day Greece grappling with the financial collapse and a mounting refugee crisis to the United States reckoning with its racist past and the growing gap between rich and poor.
Featuring a diverse cast—including celebrated theorists, trauma surgeons, activists, factory workers, asylum seekers, and former prime ministers—this urgent film connects the past and the present, the emotional and the intellectual, the personal and the political, in order to provoke and inspire. If we want to live in a democracy, we must first ask what the word even means.