“SEED: The Untold Story” to screen in Sun Valley
By Dana DuGan
In the last century, 94 percent of our seed varieties have disappeared as industrial farming and biotech chemical companies have taken control of the majority of our seeds.
In the meantime, backyard gardeners, family farmers, scientists, lawyers, and indigenous seed keepers fight a battle of epic proportions to protect our heritage, our history and our food.
“Seeds will save us,” Bill McDorman says in every one of his lectures on the subject. He is heavily featured in the movie, “SEED: The Untold Story.” Presented by the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, the documentary will screen at 7 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 25 at the Sun Valley Opera House.
Produced by Collective Eye Films and co-directed by another Ketchum native, Taggart Siegel, the movie is winning raves and awards at festivals including the Green Planet Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and The Sheffield Environmental Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest in England.
McDorman and his wife, Belle Starr, founded Seed School in 2010. It now graduates hundreds of new seed savers. In 2014, they formed the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance. McDorman and Starr will hold the first Mountain Seed School this October in Colorado.
Siegel and McDorman grew up knowing of each other. Siegel is the executive director of Collective Eye Films, a nonprofit media production and distribution organization based in Portland, Ore.
His company produced two other food-based movies, with “SEED” the final in a trilogy. He is committed to two years of outreach with the film and is screening it around the world.
The first film in the trilogy is “The Real Dirt On Farmer John” (2006) and the second is “Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?” (2010) about the catastrophic disappearance of bees.
Meanwhile, McDorman saw “Farmer John” and realized that he “knew that guy.”
“People were saying ‘you have to meet Bill,’” Siegel said.
It was not long before the two were reacquainted and working together on “SEED.”
“It took us a while, but I finally contacted him in 2012,” Siegel said. “He was the most open resource. He invited me to come film in Arizona. He opened up the seed bank, and we filmed there.”
Starr, McDorman and Siegel laughed as they told me this story. Their hands flew up as they demonstrated how Siegel threw seeds around while filming, and somehow managed to put them all back where they belong. They are all three passionate about the subject of the movie – passionate about saving the world, one seed at a time.
“The interviews with Bill in the movie are just precious,” Siegel said. “He’s been studying for 40 years, and we (the filmmakers) knew nothing.”
“SEED” was co-directed by Jon Betz.
In 2013, McDorman was at Four Corners, the conjunction of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, doing a small ceremony planting seeds with a group of people. Hopi land is located within the larger Navajo reservation in the northeast corner of Arizona.
“We wanted to film but you had to apply to Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, the director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office,” McDorman said. “Fortunately, he was there.”
Siegel picked up the tale. “After three months, they gave the SEED project permission to come and film him harvesting corn and to do an in-depth interview. Bill and I were thrilled to get these rare interviews and footage. If we were going to experience this one moment, we had to go immediately.”
Siegel said Kuwanwisiwma worked his grandfather’s field and went there every day and night for the past 60 years.
“The seeds are his children,” Siegel said.
McDorman jumped in. “Taggart asked if he sang to the corn. Leigh looked at me and said, ‘White boy thinks these ears can hear something.”
More laughs followed. I was beginning to want to see this documentary for the sheer enjoyment of sharing their enthusiasm. But “SEED” has a deep story to tell about how corporations are changing the way people eat, and live.
They said the Hopi are threatened by the patenting of their seeds. In Hawai‘i, a similar scenario is taking place. The climate and natural resources attracted five of the world’s largest biotech chemical corporations: Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Pioneer and BASF. For two decades, these chemical companies performed more open-field-test experiments of pesticide-resistant crops thousands of acres of Hawaiian land without any disclosure. Hawai‘i eventually banned GMOs entirely, the first state to take this step, in order to protect the land and its people.
In retaliation for the ban, Monsanto and Dow are suing Hawai‘i.
These are among the stories in “SEED.”
Siegel said the movie is filled with characters who “connect with seeds in a visceral way.”
Another of the main characters is Vadana Shiva. A scholar and environmental activist, Shiva has spent her life celebrating and supporting biodiversity and indigenous knowledge.
“Seed is not just the source of life,” Shiva said. “It is the very foundation of our being.”
Another character is a woman named Suman, who in her teens secretly saved seeds in her Indian community. When India found itself caught up in a farming crisis caused by mounting debt and crop failures associated with GMO crops, Suman was able to transform her whole village.
“In a correlating story, we are helping to created a Mountain West Regional Seed Vault at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden,” Starr said. This concrete vault, buried under a berm and designed by architect Dale Bates, will have seed collections, including one from Colorado State, as well as McDorman’s own collection, “which is under our bed,” Starr said. “It’s a seed bed.”
The inspiration from Seed School is igniting a new generation of seed savers. There are now about 500 seed libraries that have formed around the country. A decade ago, there was one.
There will be a filmmaker and Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance pre-screening reception at Friesen Gallery in Ketchum, from 5-6:30 p.m. with organic catered food by chef Laura Asphaga of NourishMe.
Reserve your tickets now at www.rockymountainseeds.org for pick up at will call. For more information visit, www.seedthemovie.com.