Tag: herds

The Battle for Laikipia

Directors – Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi – 2024 – US, Kenya, Greece – Cert. 12a – 94m

Disagreements in Kenya between indigenous, pastoralist herdsmen and white immigrant farmers come to a head during a severe drought exacerbated by climate change – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 4th

Shot mostly between 2017 and 2019 – so before the COVID pandemic – this is a brave attempt to relate two opposing and seemingly irreconcilable sides to a specific conflict.

Laikipia is a large, wildlife conservation area of Kenya, and the film was made some 60 or so years after Kenyan independence.

On the one hand, indigenous Kenyan tribesmen have been grazing their herds of goats and cattle on the land, simply wandering around and letting the animals graze at any suitable pasture they find. There is no concept of land ownership, except the unspoken idea that this is their country and this is therefore their land, which seems reasonable enough.

On the other hand, the early part of the twentieth century saw white British settlers awarded large areas of land to set up farms on the more profitable, Western capitalist business model. These people have now lived in the country and run their farms as enclosed ranches for some four generations.… Read the rest

Tags acreage, arrest, back-to-the-land, British immigrant, business, business model, candidate, capitalist, cattle, climate change, commercial, common ground, conflict, country, COVID, Daphne Matziaraki, deplete, disagreement, diversity, drought, election, enclosed, enclosed land, farmers, farms, global issues, goats, grass, grazing, Greece, hate speech, herds, herdsman, history, incitement of violence, indigenous, irreconcilable, irresolvable, justice and injustice, Kenya, Kifuku Ranch on modern, Laikipia, land grab, land ownership, land ownership rights, Lempurkel, Maria Dodds, mobile phone footage, nationality, opposed factions, opposing, pandemic, pastoralist, pasture, Peter Murimi, ranches, settlers, slaughter, small scale approach, stress, struggle, struggling financial, survival, tribesman, tribesmen, US, Western, white British, wildlife conservation area

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Wilding

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 June 2024
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Isabella Tree, as played by Rhiannon Neads

Director – David Allen – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 75m

*****

How Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell closed down their failing farm and instead let nature run wild to regenerate the land’s depleted biodiversity – inspiring documentary is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree (Lady Burrell) inherited the Knepp farm in West Sussex from his parents in the early 1980s. They kept it going for some 17 years. However, by the late 1990s, they were in debt to the tune of one and a half million pounds. Realising that agro-chemical pesticides and contemporary industrial farming practices were destroying the topsoil necessary for biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem, the couple then took the bold decision to stop farming and, with a little initial, minor tinkering, set about rewilding the land (i.e. letting nature take its course) and, hopefully, repair the damage done. They faced considerable opposition from the local farming community for the first five years or so. Then things began to happen which brought public opinion onto their side. In 2018, Isabella Tree wrote a book about the whole experience: Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm.

This documentary feature adaptation of Isabella’s eponymous 2018 book about their experience was shot during the pandemic and uses actors to portray the couple’s younger selves, so seamlessly cast that you actually don’t notice.… Read the rest

Tags 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020, adaptation, agro-chemical, animal actors, animation, beaver, biodiversity, book, Charlie and Isabella Tree, Charlie Burrell, computer animation, couple, cow pats, David Allen, debt, documentary, driveway, drone photography, ecology, ecosystem, environment, estate, estate office, Exmoor ponies, extinct’, farming, farming community, farming equipment, food tent, fundraising, grass, herds, inaugural flight, industrial farming practices, industrial ploughing, insect wildlife, intensive ploughing, interconnectedness, interview, Isabella Tree, Knepp farm, Lady Burrell. Inherit, land, mycorrhizal fungi, natural history, nature, nightingales, nutrients, opposition, ornamental lawn, pandemic, pesticides, pigs, polo drive, re-enactment, regenerate, replenish, rewilding, roam free, rooting, songbirds, staging historical events, stewardship, stop farming, Sussex, topsoil, trauma, trees, tuck in, turtle dove, UK, West Sussex, white stork, wild cows, Wilding, wildlife

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Wilding

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 2 June 2024
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Good Stewardship

Wilding

Directed by David Allen

Certificate PG, 75 minutes

Released 14 June

After they inherited the Knepp farm in West Sussex from his parents in the early 1980s, Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree (Lady Burrell) kept it going for some 17 years until the late 1990s, when they were one and a half million pounds in debt. The agro-chemical pesticides and industrial farming practices that they and other UK farmers use were destroying the land. The pair decided to stop running the estate as a farm and to see if there was a way of repairing or regenerating the depleted land. [Read the rest at Reform magazine.]

[Read my longer, alternative review for this site.]

Trailer: