Collective Eye Production Notes

Collective Eye co-founder and Director, Taggart Siegel joined John Peterson of The Real Dirt on Farmer John as guests and speakers at Roger Ebert’s 2008 Film Festival. Roger shows 12 film each year and Collective Eye was thrilled to learn that The Real Dirt on Farmer John was chosen to be showcased this year.

http://www.ebertfest.com/

John and Taggart appeared on stage after the screening of The Real Dirt on Farmer John and spent about an hour discussing the film. They were joined by Ang Lee, Paul Schrader, Christine Lahti and other well known people in the film industry. The audience was so moved, they gave John and Taggart a standing ovation and many people were in tears as a result of the emotional impact of this wonderful film.  The Real Dirt on Farmer John seems to elicit very strong and positive emotions wherever it screens.  The Collective Eye Hive is very happy for our lads and the well-deserved recognition they received at this film festival. 

I’ve been very fortunate meeting amazing beekeepers in the South Island of New Zealand. Many of the them come from a long line of beekeepers that go back over a hundred years. Some of the best organic honey comes out of New Zealand, especially the Manuka honey that is medicinally beneficial.New Zealand is a land where Colony Collapse Disorder hasn’t occurred, where bees are still thriving.

Bees in America are under siege with pesticides, genetically engineered crops and over breeding the queen. Bees are a barometer species and are telling us something important. All around the world Beekeepers are helping maintain healthy ecosystems with the millions of bees pollinating plants. Without the bees, future generations will not be able to bite into a delicious apple, or smell the aroma of a spring flower.

My first stop on my bee journey was Kakoura, a beautiful coastal, mountainous area where some of the best whale watching occurs in the world. Nick, a gracious certified organic beekeeper from Mountain Honey, took me in his bee truck up a Maunka forested valley to check his hives and the honey flow. It was an amazing sensation being around thousands of bees swarming around you and not having to worry (with a bee suit) about being stung.

The next day I filmed Warren Thompson, a beekeeper and sculptor. Warren says, “Art is a spiritual activity and bees really help feed that. The art of bee keeping becomes an art, not the money…It’s wonderful the way bees work with wax. Bees are a living medium that becomes a metaphor for me working with art.”Warren lives in the the high country of Hanmer Hotsprings with his wife, Elisabeth and their three daughters. Elisabeth says, “Warren’s bee hives are all healthy and they’re all well looked after. We have little dances around the bee hives when the Maunka honey comes in.” [Read more →]

After too many bus rides to count, I arrived in Chapada Diamantinha, a landscape that was like the lovechild of a promiscuous rainforest and the American Southwest on steroids. Our local guide—an African indigenous Krishna devotee—assured me that the best honey in the world was in the Capau Valley and offered to take us there. Along the way, he took unsettling pleasure in showing us the giant spiders and snakes that lazed in riverbeds; to be fair, he also pointed out the wild orchids that graced the gruelling switchbacks. For days, we trekked across arid mesas where cacti pricked the sky, descended into tropical valleys and scaled vertical waterfalls so treacherously slippery they almost made me religious.

After sweating our way over one last scorching pass we staggered into the Capau Valley, where the guide introduced me to Nalginho, a gentle Afro-Brazilian beekeeper with dreadlocks that just about reached his knees, and a demeanor as sweet as the honey from his bees.I spent four days with Nalginho, as he tended to the hives of 12 different species of bees, most of them indigenous. Nalginho lives in a tidy shack he built himself, a ten minute walk from a village so small there is only one street. Old men mosey along it with mules and wheelbarrows, teenagers rev motorbikes and kids on ponies kick up clouds of red sand as they gallop by.Nalginho’s house is set back from the road, shaded by big trees, surrounded by lush flowers. The houses of his bees are scattered around the land, in logs jammed into the crooks of magnolia trees and pastel wooden boxes propped up on rough frames or high in the mango and jackfruit branches. The bees are everywhere, a constant vibration that changes pitch with their mood, with the weather, when visitors come to the house. An orchid collection blooms in carved logs, and chickens surrounded by squeaking chicks peck in the dirt. Nalginho’s orange cat stalks the chickens, his black dog stalks the cat, and his bright-eyed son stalks the dog. There is a natural order at work.

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