#612: Heal the Land

Heal the Land is a new film which was showcased at an RGS Summer film night.

From the website:

Heal the Land is a compelling, inspiring and hopeful film about the transformation of a former intensive dairy farm in Somerset into a thriving new place for nature and people.

This beautiful 25-minute documentary, filmed entirely at the Heal Somerset site during 2024, is a journey of drama, discovery and insight into the start of this rewilding journey. 

The film features astonishing new arrivals, a remarkable array of wildlife and insightful commentary from experts and the Heal team. Above all, it shows the extraordinary resilience of nature and how quickly wildlife comes back if we give it space and allow it to thrive. With England currently one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth, the challenge to restore biodiversity and kickstart nature recovery has never been more urgent.

The trailer is shown below:

#562: New from Robert MacFarlane

A new film by Jackie Morris and Robert MacFarlane.

It's a documentary.

Here are the details from the film maker:

In 2020, during a lock down that marked us all, I discovered The Lost words book. This illustrated object simply celebrated words that qualified the nature around me in northern Europe. These words were blue bell, fox, badger, willow, conker, magpie, raven... 

Common nature names that had been taken out of the Oxford Youth Dictionary in 2007 and to which the authors Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris had given a second life. As I was relearning the landscape around me, it seemed unimaginable to lose ways to point it out, understand it and care for it.

The philosophy behind The Lost Words - between grief of disappearance and creative action - became something I wanted to bring to the screen; It is there that I found hope.

Sarah Konrath's (Indiana University) studies show that the level of empathy in younger members of the earth's population has gone down by 40% in the last ten years. Considering the easy access to the hard truths of a world in crisis, this is not surprising. Furthermore, when looking at documentaries that warn of the state of our planet, we quickly notice that catastrophe is written into the fibre of each film, warning and debilitating. The kindness in The Lost Words was what struck me; and its kind but subversive approach is what gave me the desire to make a film that invites us to change our point of view on our position as interconnected earth dwellers.

This is not a film about the book, but a film inspired by its creative and hopeful gaze. It is in this aesthetic of care that Lost For Words inserts itself; holding out a hand to the human and more-than-human.

Here's the trailer: