Still from Taking Root
Still from Taking Root
 

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai

par 2008  ·  1h19m
The dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai's treeplanting revolution.
2008  ·  1h19m  ·  Kenya
(sous-titres)
À propos du film
Planting trees for fuel, shade, and food is not something that anyone would imagine as the first step toward winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet with that simple act Wangari Maathai, a woman born in rural Kenya, started down the path that reclaimed her country’s land from 100 years of deforestation, provided new sources of food and income to rural communities, gave previously impoverished and powerless women a vital political role in their country, and ultimately helped to bring down Kenya’s twenty-four-year dictatorship. TAKING ROOT weaves a compelling and dramatic narrative of one woman’s personal journey in the context of the turbulent political and environmental history of her country. Raised in the rural highlands of Kenya, educated in the United States during the 1960s civil rights era, and the first female to receive a PhD in East Africa, Maathai discovered the heart of her life’s work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. They told her that their daily lives had become intolerable: they were walking longer distances for firewood, clean water had become scarce, the soil was disappearing from their fields, and their children were suffering from malnutrition. Maathai thought to herself, “Well, why not plant trees?” Trees provide shade, prevent soil erosion, supply firewood and building materials, and produce nutritious fruit to combat malnutrition. With this realization Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization encouraging rural women to plant trees. A seemingly innocuous idea, Maathai soon discovered that tree planting had a ripple effect of empowering change. In the mid 1980s, Kenya was under the repressive regime of Daniel arap Moi under whose dictatorship group gatherings were outlawed. In tending their nurseries women had a legitimate reason to gather outside their homes and discuss the roots of their problems. These grassroots women soon found themselves working successively against deforestation, poverty, ignorance, embedded economic interests, and political oppression, until they became a national political force. As the trees and the Green Belt Movement grew, a spirit of hope and confidence also grew in ordinary citizens – especially in women – only to be met with violent opposition from the government. Maathai and her colleagues soon found themselves victims of President Moi’s political oppression. In response, Maathai’s political activism only grew. At great risk she lead numerous confrontations in defense of the environment and social justice each of which brought her country closer to democracy. Through TV footage, newspaper headlines, and chilling first person accounts, TAKING ROOT documents these dramatic confrontations of the 1980s and 1990s and captures Maathai’s infectious determination and unwavering courage. Through perseverance and widespread grassroots organization, Kenya’s fight for democracy finally prevailed. In 2002 a new democratically elected government replaced Moi’s, and Maathai became a member of the new Parliament and Assistant Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources. And the trees continue to grow. Today there are more than 6,000 Green Belt nurseries throughout Kenya that generate income for 150,000 people, and thirty-five million trees have deeply altered the physical and social landscape of the country. The Green Belt Movement has also started programs teaching women about indigenous foods, income generating activities, AIDS, and self-empowerment. Through cinema verité footage of the tree nurseries and the women and children who tend them, TAKING ROOT brings to life the confidence and joy of people working to improve their own lives while also ensuring the future and vitality of their land. Through intimate conversations with Maathai, whose warm, powerful, and luminous presence imbues much of the film, TAKING ROOT captures a world-view in which nothing is perceived as impossible, presenting an awe-inspiring profile of one woman’s thirty-year journey of courage to protect the environment, ensure equality between men and women, defend human rights, and promote democracy–all sprouting from the achievable act of planting trees.
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Festivals et prix
2008
Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal (RIDM), Winner, Audience Choice Prize
2008
Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire du Montréal (RIDM), Winner, Prix Ecocamera (Ecocamera Award)
2008
Vermont International Film Festival, Winner, Margaret Blank Award for Storytelling
2008
Durban International Film Festival, Winner, Amnesty International Durban Human Rights Award
2008
Maui Film Festival, Winner, Green Cinema Award
2008
Nashville Film Festival, Winner, Best Documentary Feature, Honorable Mention
2008
Nashville Film Festival, Winner, Nashville Women in Film & Television Award for Best Feature Length Film Directed or Co-Directed by a Woman
2008
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Durham, North Carolina, Winner, Full Frame Women in Leadership Award
2008
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Winner, Audience Award Winner
2008
Projecting Change Film Festival, Vancouver, Winner, Audience Award
Dans la presse
Critique
En lien avec le film
À propos du cinéaste

Chelsea Greene, Rob Grobman

One Forest was formed with the mission to help people reconnect to themselves and to nature. Comprised of filmmakers Chelsea Greene and Rob Grobman, One Forest is dedicated to creating impactful and heartfelt films and media. They view the art of storytelling as a sacred work, which endows their stories with a deep reverence for the earth and the characters they feature. They have recently produced two award winning short documentaries, BORNEO’S VANISHING TRIBES and GORILLA GIRL. Their commitment to authentic, integral and informative stories paired with their youth, ambition and drive as individuals, make this unique duo and their work exceptional, relevant and inspiring. One Forest lives and works in the mountains of Southern Oregon.

 

Annam Abbas

Anam Abbas
Anam Abbas

Anam Abbas is a Pakistan based Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker. She runs Other Memory Media. As a producer and director of photography, her first feature SHOWGIRLS OF PAKISTAN, premiered in the 2020 IDFA Competition for First Appearance and was released globally on VICE in 2021. THIS STAINED DAWN (DAGH DAGH UJALA) is her award winning debut feature documentary as a director. It premiered in the International Competition section at the 2021 Sheffield International Documentary Festival.

Her first fiction feature IN FLAMES, directed by Zarrar Kahn, premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Anam is an alumna of 2017 Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors Hub, 2018 Berlinale Talents, 2019 Film Independent Global Media Makers, 2020 Berlinale Talents Project Market Fellow, and 2020 Cannes Producer’s Network. Anam is also one of the founding members of the Documentary Association of Pakistan (DAP).

 
D'autres films de Annam Abbas

Jennifer Abbott

Jennifer Abbott
Jennifer Abbott

Jennifer Abbott is a Canadian filmmaker who has been experimenting with media as a form of intellectual and creative expression and activism for almost 25 years. Abbott is largely self-taught struggling over the course of 5 years to make her first feature documentary, A Cow at My Table. At the time and before she learned the pitfalls of hyperbole, she would often be heard saying that her film meant so much to her that when it was done, she’d feel her life had been worthwhile and could die. Happily she didn’t and went on to make several others. She is best known as the co-director with Mark Achbar and editor of The Corporation, an international hit in festivals, TV and theatres. It garnered 26 awards including the Sundance Audience Award and a Genie and has a 90% rating for both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. It is also credited as one of the top ten films to inspire the Occupy Movement.

Currently Abbott is in development with the National Film Board of Canada on a feature documentary The Air That Breaths Us about the psychology of climate change. She is also co-writing and editing Sea Blind, a film about the melting Arctic Ocean and the opening of the Northern Shipping Route slated to screen at the Paris Climate Talks, COP 21. Abbott is also finishing co-directing, co-writing and editing the feature documentary Us & Them about homelessness and addiction, slated for release in 2016. In 2013, Abbott made the experimental short Brave New Minds for Amsterdam’s Submarine Channel that premiered at DOK Leipzig and was nominated for Prix Europa. ln 2012, she began developing a documentary with the NFB but emerged having written the first draft of a feature screenplay titled Money and Other Love Stories. 2011 saw the release of I Am, which Abbott edited and executive produced. Her previous work includes the experimental short Skinned exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and editing several other indie-docs. She lives on a permaculture farm with her large blended family on a small Pacific Island on Canada’s west coast.

Source

 

Anisha Abdulla

 

Jean-Marc Abela

A self-taught filmmaker with 12 years of experience, Jean-Marc focuses his energies in documentary productions. His first passion is cinematography to which he offers his services as a director/cinematographer.

He has completed two independent feature documentaries. In “Shugendô Now” he explores our relationship to nature through a Japanese tradition. In “Diversidad” he follows a group of young adults who embark on a journey to discover their relationship to the food they eat.

His niche is the creation of positive and heartfelt films that seek to share solutions to the fundamentals problems of our society. This comes from his conviction to play a part in the creation of a more ecological and just society.

Jean-Marc has travelled around the world with his camera and through his explorations in film discovered a second passion in Permaculture, a science of sustainable design through the study of nature. He is gaining more experience as an educator and facilitator, giving workshops in video making and the Permaculture design process. He practices the Chinese art of Qi Gong and has produced instructional Qi Gong DVDs for two of his teachers.
Past clients include BBC Worldwide, National Geographic, Discovery World HD, Madonna, Moment Factory, Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Éloize, Tourism Québec, TVA, Canal Évasion and more.

 

Dima Abu Ghoush

 

Sandra Ach

At the moment, we haven’t completed this individual’s Artist Page, but please check back regularly as our worker bees slowly chip away at the huge list of Cinema Politica artists in need of pages!

If this is your Artist Page you can submit information to us to have your page filled in, and we will happily add it to support your work.

 

Mark Achbar

Mark Achbar
Director Mark Achbar. THE CORPORATION, a film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan. A Zeitgeist Films release.

Achbar is a graduate of Syracuse University’s Fine Arts Film Program. Achbar interned in Hollywood on the children’s TV programme Bill Daily’s Hocus Pocus Gang, followed by a three year stint in Toronto with Sunrise Films on their documentary series Spread your Wings and the CBC/Disney series Danger Bay. He then teamed up with director Robert Boyd, and received a Gemini nomination for Best Writer on The Canadian Conspiracy, a cultural/political satire for CBC and HBO’s Comedy Experiments which chronicled Canada’s secret takeover of the USA. It won a Gemini for Best Entertainment Special and was nominated for an International Emmy.
Achbar moved into independent media, working in many capacities on films, videos and books on issues ranging from nuclear lunacy, poverty, and East Timor, to the media, U.S. hegemony and corporate power.
With Peter Wintonick, Achbar co-directed and co-produced Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, which was, until the release of The Corporation Canada’s all-time, top-grossing feature documentary. Achbar’s companion book to the film hit the national best-seller list in Canada.
Achbar collaborated with editor Jennifer Abbott to create Two Brides and a Scalpel: Diary of a Lesbian Marriage, a low-budget video diary by the couple known as Canada’s first legally married lesbians. This true story of “boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy becomes girl” received festival invitations from around the globe and was broadcast in Canada on Pridevision and the Knowledge Network.
In 1997, Achbar initiated a project titled The Corporation with author and University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan. Bakan wrote the film and book, while Achbar directed, produced and executive-produced the film. Jennifer Abbott joined the team as editor and co-director in 2000. The documentary compares globalized corporate psychology and practice to formal definitions of psychopathic behaviour, touching on environmental and social issues, as well as historical origins of corporate behaviour.

 

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