Earth Day:“DIRT! The Movie” on PBS by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow

(Staring Vandana Shiva, Wangaria Mathai)

 The premier was last night on PBS’ Independent Lens. It is the best ecological documentary ever! The documentary is interesting and scientifically fun. It is perfect for everyone. The animations make it playful and interactive.  And the characters give a wide scope of all our communities. Dirt is us, we are dirt. Dirt is earth’s skin. “This is a living breathing matrix of life on terrestrial earth.”

The Kenyan Nobel Peace laureate, Wangari Maathai pleas for action regardless how small it is. She tells a story about a fire in the forest, where only a humming bird rushes to get water while others larger animals just stand and look at the growing fire. When asked why such dedication regardless of the devastation. The humming bird answers because I do what I can. It brings awareness of farmers struggle for survival. Global warming does not scare us because we go to the supermarket for everything. However, the small farmers know the urgency. And the correlation between soil, floods, drought, desertification, genocide, famine, and civil war is real. What touched me the most is that Indian farmers committed suicide by drinking the pesticides they cannot afford to sustain their families.

The documentary personifies dirt and microorganisms. And ask the question, what if humans are the viruses that earth has to kill. It is time to cooperate and humble ourselves.It is time to change. It is time to think like the humming bird because we are dirt.


DIRT! The Movie TRAILER from visionOntv on Vimeo.
DIRT! The Movie--directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow--takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth's most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility--from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.