Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Barry
Location
Johnson Center Large Theatre
Presentation Type
Event
Start Date
21-9-2017 7:00 PM
Description
Look and See revolves around the divergent stories of several residents of Henry County, Kentucky who each face difficult choices that will dramatically reshape their relationship with the land and their community. In 1965, Wendell Berry returned home to Henry County, where he bought a small farm house and began a life of farming, writing and teaching. A half 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the agrarian virtues of simplicity, land stewardship, sustainable farming, local economies and rootedness to place have been replaced by a capital-intensive model of industrial agriculture characterized by machine labor, chemical fertilizers, soil erosion and debt - all of which have frayed the fabric of rural communities. Filmed across four seasons in the farming cycle, LOOK & SEE blends observational scenes of farming life, interviews with farmers and community members with evocative, carefully framed shots of the surrounding landscape. Thus, Henry County itself emerges as a character in the film - a place and a landscape that is deeply interdependent with the people that inhabit it.
Recommended Citation
Sanders, Scott Russell and Sisson, Annette PhD, "Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Barry" (2017). Humanities Symposium. 2.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2017/ff2017/2
Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Barry
Johnson Center Large Theatre
Look and See revolves around the divergent stories of several residents of Henry County, Kentucky who each face difficult choices that will dramatically reshape their relationship with the land and their community. In 1965, Wendell Berry returned home to Henry County, where he bought a small farm house and began a life of farming, writing and teaching. A half 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the agrarian virtues of simplicity, land stewardship, sustainable farming, local economies and rootedness to place have been replaced by a capital-intensive model of industrial agriculture characterized by machine labor, chemical fertilizers, soil erosion and debt - all of which have frayed the fabric of rural communities. Filmed across four seasons in the farming cycle, LOOK & SEE blends observational scenes of farming life, interviews with farmers and community members with evocative, carefully framed shots of the surrounding landscape. Thus, Henry County itself emerges as a character in the film - a place and a landscape that is deeply interdependent with the people that inhabit it.
Comments
Convocation Credit: Creative and Performing Arts