INTERVIEW WITH Dr. DAVID SUZUKI
AUTHOR OF TREE: A LIFE STORY

Talking Stick TV
2004, 28 min 13 sec

This is a story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions. It is the story of a single tree. Scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki and writer Wayne Grady tell the life story of a tree, beginning when heat from a devastating forest fire opens thousands of pine cones and sends millions of seeds into the air. Most of these seeds perish, but one falls into the soil and develops into the tree that is the subject of this story.

Suzuki and Grady also describe how the tree grows and receives nourishment and what role the tree plays in the forest throughout its life. It acts as a home to a succession of creatures and plays a crucial role in the water cycle, in breaking rock down into soil, and in removing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Even after the tree dies, it provides a home for moss, ferns, and other plants, which use the tree as a nurse log, and it provides nutrients for insects and fungi. Tree also looks at the community of organisms that share the tree’s ecosystem and at the events going on in the larger world during the tree’s lifetime.

DO TREES COMMUNICATE?

Libelle THE SERIES
2011, 4 min 41 sec

Look where James Cameron got the Idea for Avatar’s Mothertree! Great short documentary, produced by Julia Dordel (filmed and directed by Dan McKinney) who also brought the science aspect into the web series libelletheseries.com. In this real-life model of forest resilience and regeneration, Professor Suzanne Simard shows that all trees in a forest ecosystem are interconnected.

BRUCE PASCOE ON ABORIGINAL AGRICULTURE: MAINTAINING
A CULTURE OF MILLENIA

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute; Australia
2016, 53 min 32 sec

Bruce Pascoe (born 1947 Richmond, Victoria) is an Australian Indigenous writer, from the Bunurong clan, of the Kulin nation. He has worked as a teacher, farmer, a fisherman and an Aboriginal language researcher.

FOREST MAN

Polygon Window Productions; Toronto, Canada
2013, 16 min 34 sec

Since the 1970 Majuli islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees in order to save his island. To date he has single handedly planted a forest larger than Central Park NYC. His forest has transformed what was once a barren wasteland, into a lush oasis.

WHAT PLANTS TALK ABOUT

PBS Erna Buffie; USA
2013, 52 min 57 sec

When we think about plants, we don’t often associate a term like “behavior” with them, but experimental plant ecologist JC Cahill wants to change that. The University of Alberta professor maintains that plants do behave and lead anything but solitary and sedentary lives.

SINGING PLANTS AT DAMANHUR

Bruce Starr
2011; 15 min 32 sec

Experience what is was like to be in the Sacret Forests in Damanhur and listen to the singing plants. It will change your perception on life.

YEARS: MUSIC ON A SLICE OF TREE

Bartholomäus Traubeck
2011, 2 min 13 sec

A record player that plays slices of wood.
Modified record player, wood, sleeves.

THIS CRAZY TREE GROWS 40 KINDS OF FRUIT

National Geographic; USA
2015, 4 min 5 sec

Sam Van Aken, an artist and professor at Syracuse University, uses “chip grafting” to create trees that each bear 40 different varieties of stone fruits, or fruits with pits. Van Aken says it’s both a work of art and a time line of the varieties’ blossoming and fruiting. He’s created more than a dozen of the trees that have been planted at sites such as museums around the U.S., which he sees as a way to spread diversity on a small scale.

THE ROOTS OF PLANT INTELLIGENCE

TED, Stefano Manusco,
2010, 17 min 59 sec

Plants behave in some oddly intelligent ways: fighting predators, maximizing food opportunities … But can we think of them as actually having a form of intelligence of their own? Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso presents intriguing evidence.

7 FOOD FORESTS IN 7 MINUTES WITH GEOFF LAWTON

Let’s face it, with our all consuming global problems, there aren’t many natural solutions out there that can halt &reverse deforestation, stabilise the climate by returning carbon to the soil where it belongs, solve poverty & extreme hunger all in one hit are there?

Yet this is exactly what the food forest is capable of, and provided people understand it and are at the centre of the system, they can go on living off that land forever.