From final project to RIFF
Two documentary shorts made by Berry students for their Seeing Subsistence course are shown at the Rome International Film Festival.
Two documentary shorts made by Berry College students were screened during the Rome International Film Festival on Saturday morning, and both look at how we view food and how locals get it.
Senior Emmie Cornell and three fellow students wrote and directed “Rise ’N Shine: CSA Story,” which looks into the Community Supported Agriculture farm from Calhoun that the documentary title references.
Matt Bentley, also a senior, created “Backyard Chickens” with the help of two other students, as Emmie Cornell they dug into the impact of prohibitions on having chickens in residential areas.
Professor Brian Campbell called on students in his Seeing Subsistence course, focused on anthropology and environmental studies, to develop documentary shorts. The course is Bentley’s kind of class, he said, where the final project was not an exam but making a nine-minute film.
Both students have a liking of farming, they said, so the nature of their films was right in their wheelhouse.
Rise ’N Shine Organic Farm was already on Cornell’s radar prior to making the film, and she had drawn inspiration from them for her future plans of having a farm of her own one day. She said her group wanted to look at the general disconnect many people have with their food and its origin.
They wanted to use an example of how local people are challenging this disconnect by following the farm’s production of food through its distribution — a pickup site for their produce boxes is Swift & Finch Coffee — and finally consumption by a local family.
For Bentley’s film, his group interviewed residents who had to give up their backyard chickens due to restrictions of local ordinances. Each member of his group thought a ban was ridiculous, so the film has an activist stance in pushing for a reversal on the issue, he said.
When people think of chickens, they think nasty and noisy, Bentley said, all the while looking over their value in efforts of sustainability and food security, from using their feces for fertilizer or their predation on insects. The massive chicken farm with lots of waste and putrid stench comes to the public’s mind instead of the homeowner with two or three hens.
Cornell said foreign documentaries tend to be romanticized, but films about pertinent issues closer to home can be more powerful. Making the film touched home for her, as it affirmed her desire to be a lifetime farmer and how she can impact a community by being one.
Both films can be found on YouTube.
The Rome International Film Festival continues today. Check www.riffga.com for showtimes.
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