Gatherings - Episode 4 - Embers

At the far-flung edge of Canada's boreal forest, outside the tiny sub-Arctic town of Dawson City, Yukon, a handful of unlikely farmers are growing everything from snow-covered Brussels sprouts to apples. These modern-day agrarians have carved out small patches of fertile soil in an otherwise unforgiving expanse of isolated wilderness to make a living and a life. Over the course of a year, Dawson filmmaker David Curtis follows these resilient, unassuming farmers-including a German immigrant, a young family that taps birch trees for syrup, a First Nations youth, and a matriarch who can shoot and quarter a moose-exploring life, death, and time through the simple, rich day-to-day of people deeply tied to the wilds. Sovereign Soil is an ode to the beauty of this ferocious, remote land and the wisdom of those who've chosen to call it home.

Avec de la débrouillardise, on peut faire face aux plus grands défis. Et quand il s'agit d'environnement, une résistance pacifique se manifeste.

In this documentary, crop and animal farmers in Quebec, the Canadian West, the US Northeast and France offer solutions to the social and environmental scourges of factory farming. Driven by the forces of globalization, rampant agribusiness is harming the environmemt and threatening the survival of farms. The proliferation of GMO crops is a further threat to biodiversity as well as to farmers' autonomy. In Europe as well as North America, a current of resistance bringing together farmers and consumers insists that it is possible--indeed imperative--to grow food differently. The Fight for True Farming is a film of grim lucidity but also irrepressible hope.