Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry

Culinary Cinema 2017

In 1965, Wendell Berry returned home to Henry County, Kentucky (USA), where he bought a small farm house and began a life of farming, writing and teaching. This lifelong relationship with the land and community would come to form the core of his prolific writings. Half a century later Henry County, like many rural communities across America, has become a place of quiet ideological struggle. In the span of a generation, the agrarian virtues of simplicity, land stewardship, sustainable farming, local economies and rootedness to place have been replaced by a capital-intensive model of industrial agriculture characterized by machine labor, chemical fertilizers, soil erosion and debt. Berry has watched this struggle unfold, becoming one of its most passionate and eloquent voices in defense of agrarian life. Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry blends observational scenes of farming life, interviews with farmers and community members with evocative, carefully framed shots of the surrounding landscape. Thus, in the spirit of Berry’s agrarian philosophy, Henry County itself will emerge as a character in the film - a place and a landscape that is deeply interdependent with the people that inhabit it.

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by Laura Dunn
with Wendell Berry, Tanya Berry, Mary Berry, Steve Smith USA 2016 English 80’ Colour Documentary form

With

Wendell Berry
Tanya Berry
Mary Berry
Steve Smith

Crew

Director	Laura Dunn
Cinematography	Lee Daniel
Editing	Laura Dunn
Music	Kerry Muzzey
Sound Design	Justin Hennard
Sound	Justin Hennard
Producer	Jef Sewell
Executive Producers	Terrence Malick, Robert Redford
Co-Producers	Owsley Brown, III, Nick Offerman, Elaine Mussellman, Gill Holland
Co-Production	Owsley Brown Presents San Francisco Offerman Woodshop Los Angeles Tangible Productions New York

World sales

Submarine Entertainment

Josh Braun

Produced by

Two Birds Film

Laura Dunn

Laura Dunn is the founder and Executive Director of Two Birds Film, a documentary film production company based in Austin, Texas. Her films focus on the environment, human health, agriculture and socio-economic issues. Her other documentaries include The Subtext of a Yale Education, Green and The Unforeseen. Highlights from years of international screenings include the Sundance Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art. Honors include a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship and a Sundance Documentary Fellowship. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and six young boys.

Filmography

1999 Baby · The Subtext of a Yale Education 2000 Green 2002 Become the Sky 2007 The Unforeseen

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2017