DVD Review: The Garden: Danny Glover, Daryl Hannah, Antonio Villaraigosa, Scott Hamilton Kennedy: Movies & TV

Aug19

DVD Review: The Garden: Danny Glover, Daryl Hannah, Antonio Villaraigosa, Scott Hamilton Kennedy: Movies & TV

Posted by admin | on 19 August, 06:51 AM

Review
[Director] Hamilton captures the heart-wrenching devastation done in the name of profit, as citizens mourn. Incredibly effecting. –Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

Product Description
THE GARDEN is an engaging and powerful look at the famous political and social battle over the largest community garden in the U.S (located in south central Los Angeles).

A follow-up to Kennedy’s award-winning documentary, OT: OUR TOWN, the film shows how the politics of power and greed (backroom deals, land developing, green politics, money) tragically intersect with working class families who rely on this communal garden for their livelihood. Equal parts THE WIRE and HARLAN COUNTY, USA, THE GARDEN, exposes the fault lines in American society and raises crucial and challenging questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

Kenneth Turan of the LA Times said: It’s tempting to call THE GARDEN a story of innocence and experience, of evil corrupting paradise, but that would be doing a disservice to the fascinating complexities of a classic Los Angeles conflict and an excellent documentary that does them full justice.

See all Editorial Reviews

political film at its best!,

By D. E. fenkel “intomovies” -

this doc shows the full spectrum of a nasty fight between crooked city council members, unprincipled community leaders, and hard working immigrant workers making great use of public land.

so damn deserving the academy award nomination it received.

i can’t recommend it enough. it’s the real life The Wire.

loved this doc,

By Nick “nick” (Brooklyn) -

I saw this movie at Cinema Village in NY and was so impressed by its raw, fly-on-the-wall approach. Being a New Yorker I knew nothing of the plight of these farmers in South Central LA and their attempts to take on greedy developers and city hall to save their community garden, but this story has universal appeal. An enthralling and necessary doc.

Good Use of Available Documents,

By Mike In NYC -

I saw this film at an IFC screening in NYC that included a Q&A with the director afterward. People who advocate of the rights of the poor to use under-used urban land almost universally love this film. I suspect the director shares their sympathies. What usually goes unnoticed as far as the story is concerned is that the city took private land through eminent domain and then failed to use the land for any of the public purposes for which land seizures are normally reserved. After the passage of several years, the city then sold the land back to the original owner at the price they’d originally paid him. On the surface, this does not seem ‘unfair’. However, in the interim poor immigrants, many of whom were presumably undocumented, began to farm the land. That Hamilton failed to document whether or not these people were undocumented, whether any particular viewer feels this is germane or not, is a minor flaw in the film. Of course, their immigration status would have been a difficult topic to broach with the immigrants themselves and might have changed the filmmaker’s access to the immigrant community, but it might also have served to highlight the differences between the immigrant community and the allegedly corrupt city counselors who were elected by the poor Black residents of the area. Be that as it may, Hamilton does a good job with the documents available to present the complexity of the situation, if only in passing. I spoke to Hamilton after the screening. He’d already sold the few DVDs he had with him for $20 and urged me to call or email him for a copy. I’ve done both, but only get an answering machine or a form email telling me the DVD is available, because of my university affiliation, for $310, even though I have no plans to use the DVD in an educational setting.
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