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Symphony of the Soil

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Unless you’re a farmer or a professional gardener, it’s unlikely you put much thought into the dirt beneath our collective feet. I know I sure don’t—despite having been chided a few times by my landscaper neighbour about my miserable mineral misnomer: “It’s not dirt,” she reminds me. “It’s soil.”

Which is exactly the point of director Deborah Koons Garcia’s insightful and inspiring Symphony of the Soil: like the rest of our elemental natural resources (notably air and water), we all tend to take the earth for granted. No surprise Open Cinema chose this 104-minute documentary to kick off their tenth season—long known for pairing significant docs with engaging discussions, this is not only the Canadian premiere for Symphony of the Soil but it’s bound to spark a few conversations come the October 3 screening (which will also feature director Garcia in attendance).

Best known for her acclaimed 2004 film The Future of Food, Garcia (yes, she’s the widow of the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia) offers us a three-part look at this essential element, from the rare and unlikely fact that we actually have a planet covered with soil—which, as numerous experts tell us, is an organic material and not just a mineral—to the toll a century of industrial agriculture has taken upon it and the people who are working to make a difference in the current century. If soil is, as one expert puts it, “the interface between biology and geology,” then this Symphony is the moist loam where the seeds of new ideas sprout into the bloom of awareness.

Much like 2010′s Queen of the Sun, this is an environmental doc that doesn’t set out to scare audiences as much as enlighten and inform them; yes, there are a few inconvenient truths here—such as the fact that one-third of the world’s arable land has already been lost to soil erosion and 60 percent of our ecological systems are reaching the point of collapse—but Garcia’s focus is as much on how people are moving forward as it is on the mistakes that were made in the past. From compost and soil producers to scientists and organic farmers, she has assembled a fascinating cross-section of experts who tend to sway the viewer with the simple logic of their actions. By the end of the film, you’re simply left wondering why everyone isn’t approaching farming with an eye to making better soil.

An American filmmaker, it’s no surprise the primary focus is on the continental US (Canadian audiences will find no answers to their inevitable questions about what’s happening north of the border), but Garcia does give Symphony a global scope with visits to Wales, Hawaii, Egypt and India—notably the latter, where a compost farm offers a vivid juxtaposition between the impact the “green revolution” of industrialization had on the previous generation of farmers. And, much like the diverse content of soil itself, this Symphony is chock-a-block with well-spoken experts who you just want to believe—absolutely none of whom are shy about the science behind the soil. (There’s a particularly fun montage of all the many, varied different types of soil—which, again, who knew?)

Unlike many documentaries these days, which seem to lean on handheld cameras for a sense of forced immediacy, Symphony also benefits from being beautifully shot by cinematographer John Chater. From glacier to peat bogs and volcanoes to desert (with a nice bit of watercolour animation added to the mix), it’s easy to get lulled in by the visuals here. Note too should be made of Todd Boekelheide’s equally beautiful score; it’s not many documentaries that look and sound as good as this one.