SIFF DocFest: Farming While Black
October 5, 2024
Committed to reversing the decline of Black-owned farms, a movement of activists and change-makers shed light on the challenges they’ve faced in the USA, and lay the groundwork for a new generation to reclaim their heritage.
Individual Tickets: Select showtime to purchase
Passes: $100 | $75 Members - Provides access to all DocFest screenings
SIFF year-round passes are not valid for DocFest screenings.
In 1910, Black farmers owned 14 percent of all American farmland. Over the intervening decades, that number fell to two percent as the result of racism, discrimination, and dispossession. As the co-founder of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, Leah Penniman finds strength in the deep historical knowledge of African agrarianism—agricultural practices that can heal people and the planet. Influenced and inspired by Karen Washington, a pioneer in urban community gardens in New York City, and fellow farmer and organizer Blain Snipstal, Leah centers farming as the basis of revolutionary justice. Weaving the rich and troubled history of the Black American farming experience with the contemporary resurgence of the land sovereignty movement, director Mark Decena’s visually eloquent documentary chronicles the efforts of these activists and change-makers to reclaim their agricultural heritage.
- Director: Mark Decena
- Country: USA
- Year: 2023
- Running Time: 77 min.
- Producer: Elizabeth Lupino Decena, Lynn Waymer
- Cinematographers: Lawrence Rickford
- Editors: Bernardo Josue
- Website: Official Film Website
- Filmography: Not Without Us (2016), Watershed : Exploring a New Water Ethic for the New West (2012, Dopamine (2003)
- Language: English
- Format: DCP