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The Real Dirt on Farmer John

The Real Dirt on Farmer John

(The Real Dirt on Farmer John), Taggart Siegel / USA, 2005
English version / Czech subtitles, 82 min

The shooting of “The Real Dirt on Farmer John” started already back in the fifties when farmer John’s mother brought an amateur camera home and started filming the life of her family. In the sixties John and his friends filmed life on the farm, while they were determined to keep the farm going. Bank loans were slowly coming to an end and John had to sell nearly everything. The lack of money and sadness over the nearly lost farm lead John to leave for Mexico. When he eventually came back he founded the Peterson bio-farm which today supplies over 1300 families around Chicago with bio-vegetables and fruit.

Director Taggart Siegel spent nearly 20 years with John and thanks to that could bring an authentic testimony of the destruction and revival of a dream. The documentary shows the pitfalls that await honest farmers in the US, human relentlessness, and humor without which John would not come around many a time.

The screening will be followed by an audience discussion with Czech farmers working within Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and the “bedýnky” (baskets) system.