Each summer, I take time off my regular job to work at Silverdocs, a documentary film festival by the American Film Institute and Discovery Channel.
Among their dozens of films each year, they often screen one or two about gardening, such as THE GARDEN, a documentary about Mexican-American families turning a forgotten corner lot in Los Angeles into a community garden. This year, the they are screening CORNER PLOT, a ten minute short about an old farmer on a one-acre lot inside the Beltway who has seen the neighboring farmland gobbled up by urban developments.
Even as a youngster growing up on a large farm in middle-of-nowhere, Kentucky, I remember how any new construction would be cause for concern. There was the gas station, located a few hundred feet down the road from the first gas station. And the new house on the other side of the ravine.
I even remember stories of county officials trying to double the width of the gravel road that serviced four or five families. Shortly after my my mother joined my father on his family farm, he left for Vietnam and the county officials started pressuring my mother to cut down a magnificent, old tree so that they could widen the road. Despite being the “city woman” in the old farming community (and thus, the outcast), she was successfully able to fend them off, causing them widen the road everywhere except along our land. (After they finished, they didn’t bother servicing any of the road. I’m still not sure if they were retaliating against my mother for not giving in or if they were doing what county officials sometimes seem to do…)
Because I am now gardening in the DC-metro area and because he faces more bureaucracy and change to the surrounding land than I care to imagine, I tip my had to the old man featured in CORNER PLOT. If you’ in the area, I suggest you check it out.
Watch a trailer and see screening times for CORNER PLOT here.