Garden Stories
“Looking for the country in the city."

Written and directed by: Boris Gerrets
Camera: Stef Tijdink
Sound: Rik Meier
Editor: Boris Gerrets
SoundMix: Wart Wamsteker
Line producer: Hetty Krapels
Producer: Pieter van Huystee Film & Tv

When man discovered how to grow his own food, somewhere in the depth of history, mankind began its long journey that brought us where we are today. And where are we today? What began as a symbiosis between man and nature, is now a world in which more than half of mankind has become a city dweller.
Many people’s lives take place in the midst of inert concrete and perpetual movement. Where there used to be a symbiosis between man and nature there is now one of man and machine ­ and there seems to be no way back. But most city dwellers are only a few generations away from the country life. And while in many places the 21st century city continues to accumulate its urban problems such as: alienation, crime, isolation, unhealthy food, industrial pollution, or poverty, some of them remember that in order to survive you must remain in touch with the forces of nature. Where ever they can they find a plot, a rooftop or an empty lot and start farming, growing their own food right there in the city.
In this film some of these urban gardeners will be telling the story of their gardens ­ in Detroit, where decades of urban decay have left people impoverished and confused and in St. Petersburg, where a sudden change of political and economic conditions have thrown its people into the deep end. They are down to earth, single-minded people whose gardens are an extension of their personality.
At the same time their garden reflects the larger world of the city. They show something about what we eat, where our food comes from, about food quality, pollution, food supply lines, car dependency, urban decay, disrupted neighbourhoods, industrial decline... in other words, how the local situation of the garden connects to the global one of the world.

Cities like Detroit, home of the mass production of cars, or St Petersburg, spindle of an empire and cradle of a revolution, embody some of the forces that had helped create the world in which we live today. But now their heyday is gone, their communal life disrupted and they will have to find new ways to move forward.
Looking at a garden, between parking lots, highways, burnt-out family homes or high-rise flats another state of mind emerges, with another rhythm and a different set of values. It brings to mind the nurturing and caring without which any garden will inexorably turn back into the wilderness it once was. Then, when you look again at the parking lots, the highways, the burnt-out family homes or the high-rise flats you may wonder whether that spirit belongs to the past or whether it can heal the future.

Pieter van Huystee Film
Noordermarkt 37-39 – 1015 NA Amsterdam – t +31 20 421 0606 / f +31 20638 6255
www.pvhfilm.nl / festival handling Matthijs Koenen matthijs@pvhfilm.nl