Brown Lenses Environmental Doc in Queens
(released
4/5/2016)
By Kimberly Burke
The latest lensing from Jesse Brown comes from a personal passion place. "Plant the Seed" documents a class of 6th graders in Queens from the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School. The students want to take a triangle of unused land on school property and transform it in a week. The triangle plot becomes a place of learning, growing, sharing, and nourishing for the community that produced the now useful space.
Aaron Stump is the project leader and friend to cinematographer Jesse Brown, who works under the banner Digi Ranch. Brown's brother Zack, a chef and gardener is also part of the project. Stump shared his plan with Jesse Brown to travel from Bend, Oregon to Queens, NYC to donate his time and experience in permaculture with a class of 6th graders.
Jesse Brown captures Aaron Stump and Zack Brown expanding upon the students' designed ideas for the garden. They begin showing the students how to build bird houses, explaining the birds naturally eat bugs and pests in the garden eliminating the need for chemical pesticides. They teach the students recycling using old tires that would be land fill, instead can be repurposed in the garden project. An arch is erected by the students with their leaders, made of tree logs and plugged with shiitake mushrooms to further the students knowledge of fungi, decomposition, and the life cycle.
"It wouldn't have been possible without Aaron, my brother Zack, Pat & Damon, Kimberly Scher, Court King, all of the teachers, community volunteers, and of course the amazing and inspiring students at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School." said Jesse Brown. "We need more schools like this and we all need to get involved in knowing where our food comes from. We always talk about being sustainable, but there's real proof that we as humans can actually take it a step further and actually be regenerative for our planet. The choice is ours, but the future is theirs and we owe it to all of them."
The cinematographer encourages us all to participate and share the knowledge captured in his latest work. Watch "Plant the Seed" here: https://vimeo.com/153019059
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