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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Ben Lazman. I'm the online content and Community Manager for Library of America. And welcome to tonight's Q and A with Laura Dunn and Mary Berry. This is following up this weekend's virtual screening of look and See, A Portrait of Wendell Berry, presented by Library of America and the Berry Center. A big thank you to Library of America members and subscribers for their support of our nonprofit mission and thanks to everyone here for joining us this evening. The work of Wendell Berry appears in several LOA editions, all of which can be purchased through our website loa.org and links to purchase will be shared in the chat. The two volume what I Stand the Collected Essays of Wendell Berry, 1969-2017. You can find Barry's landmark nonfiction, including the Unsettling of America, why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer, and more than 70 other pieces. And in Barry's Port William novels and stories, currently spanning two volumes, discover an indelible portrait of rural America through the lens of Port William, Kentucky, one of the most fully imagined places in American literature. We're very lucky to be joined by our distinguished guests tonight. The Berry Center Executive Director, Mary Berry and her brother Den Barry, were raised by their parents, Wendell and Tanya Berry, at Lane's Landing Farm in Henry County, Kentucky, from the time she was six years old. Mary currently serves on the boards of directors of the United Citizens bank in Newcastle, Kentucky the Shoemaker center for New Economics in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and Sterling College in Vermont. She speaks all over the country as a proponent of agriculture of the middle, in defense of small farmers and in the hope of restoring a culture and an economy that has been lost in rural America. Her writings have appeared in various publications and collections, including Letters to a Young Farmer on Food, Farming and Our Future and the introduction for a new edition of essays, Our Sustainable Table, edited by Robert Clark. Laura Dunn's first feature documentary, the Unforeseen Executive, produced by Robert Redford and Terence Malick, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was released theatrically and broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Her second feature, look and See A Portrait of Wendell Berry, also executive produced by Robert Redford and Terrence Malick, and funded in part by the Sundance Documentary Film Fund, won a Special Jury Prize for visual design at south by Southwest, aired nationally on PBS's Independent Lens, streamed on Netflix, and toured to over 100 rural communities. Dunn's honors include a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship Student Academy Award, Yale's Trumbull Fine Arts Prize, an International Documentary Association Pierre Lorenz Grant, and an Independent Spirit Truer Than Fiction Award. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Thanks again for joining us tonight. The Q and A button is on your menu bar. And now please welcome Mary Berry and Laura Dunn.
- [02:43]
B
Thank you.
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C
Hi.
- [02:44]
B
Thanks.
- [02:46]
A
So, Laura, we were thinking you could maybe start by speaking a little bit sort of generally about the genesis of this film. You know, kind of where it came out of your sort of initial encounters with Wendell Berry and why you embarked on this filmmaking project.
- [03:04]
C
Well, I want to start with saying I once asked Wendell what his favorite bit of scripture is. And of course, like always, I think my question is a really clever question. And then he kind of tears it to shreds. And he sort of scolded me for asking him what his favorite thing was. He says he doesn't like favorites. This whole favorite business. I don't like this favorite business. So that that sort of popped into my mind when we were talking earlier, Ben, because I will not say that Wendell is one of my favorite writers. I won't say it. But I will say that his work has meant a great deal to me over many, many years since I was probably a teenager. So that's the genesis of why I wanted to make this film. Because his work is so deeply meaningful to me. And you mentioned the unforeseen. I made a documentary about a struggle to save a spring fed swimming hole in Austin, Texas. And that's where Robert Redford learned to swim, which is why he was involved in it, where he learned to love the natural world. And I made that with him and Terence Malik. And it was a great, wonderful learning experience. But there was a poem of Wendell's, one of his Sabbath poems that really spoke to me in the process of making that film. And I wrote to Wendell and asked him if I could record him reading the poem to put in that film. In that poem, he uses the word the unforeseen a lot, over and over again. So the title for that feature drew its name from Wendell. When I screened that film, I was all over the world. I was really struck with how there were people who knew of his work and it meant a great deal to them. And then there were a lot of people who didn't know his work. And that I found very troubling. So when Robert Redford asked me what do I want to do next? I told him at the time I was rereading the Unsettling of America and that I thought that was that this voice was really important voice to amplify and to draw people to his work. And Bob was also deeply Moved by the unsettling of America when it came out in the 70s. And I'm sure Mary can tell a really funny story about that. But, you know, Bob was like, I'm in. Let's do it. So I will say that I then wrote to Wendell and asked him about doing this film. And I think there were several letters exchanged, and it was sort of hot. Cold. Hot, Cold. Yes, no. Yes, no. And I kind of gave up because, as I've said before, I admire him. I don't want to be intrusive or be a burden. But it was really Wendell's wife, Tanya, who made this possible. He and Tanya came to Austin to do a talk with Wes Jackson, actually. And I was fortunate enough to see them at the time. And I think, Mary, this was when you were starting the Berry center, and it was in its early stages, and my guess is that your mom thought maybe I could help somehow. And. And she invited me to return to visit them and encouraged me to pursue the film. So without her, it wouldn't have been possible. I think Mary probably feels the same about a lot of things. I think many of us could say without her, nothing would be possible.
- [06:39]
B
Certainly, I can say that.
- [06:40]
C
Yeah. I mean, that was really kind of how it came about. I do want to say that, you know, Wendell made it very clear to me early on, and I saw some of the questions that were coming in about why is he not in the film? And he made it very clear to me early on that he believes that the screen is not a good thing. He believes that it deadens the imagination and contributes to the decline of literacy. Both very important quotes in this context of the Library of America audience. And, you know, I kind of agree with him, actually. I'm not someone who actually particularly likes film films. I just feel like it's the language of my age and my culture, and I'm. I'm. I. You know, I'm kind of walking into battle, in a sense, with it. So he didn't want to be on camera. He said that he's nothing but for the place he's in and the people he's around. He doesn't want to be made an idol of. And so, you know, a lot of filmmakers might have said, well, I can't really make a film about someone who doesn't want me to film him. But I. I think documentary is very much the art of constraints and that you embrace the constraint. The constraint itself becomes a part of the story. And so, like all, you know, great thinkers and teachers in that constraint I think Wendell gave me a great opportunity to think more imaginatively about how to render a portrait. So in the end, I decided that it would be a portrait of the world as Wendell sees it. Sort of a portrait of his mind's eye and not a portrait of the way the world sees him. And he is very much in the film. His voice is there. His words are our guide. His world is the imagery. But that's why we don't sort of have the camera facing him. Is because that's the constraint he gave us to work with.
- [08:39]
A
Thanks so much, Laura. Mary, would you like to add anything to what Laura said? Maybe. I'm kind of curious about his decision not to be on camera. And maybe you could speak a little to that attitude and what lies behind it. And this question of screens and their prevalence in the culture versus maybe what Wendell Berry believes is more important.
- [09:06]
B
I'll start with what I remember from that time. When my mother got back from Austin. She told me that she had spoken with a filmmaker named Laura Dunn. And that I should take her seriously. So my mother is a very discerning person. And if she had met Laura and thought we shouldn't take her seriously, she would have certainly said that. So it is been a great joy to know Laura and Jeff. And it has meant a good deal to me to have not my father's work, not my father's work, but not just my father's work taken seriously by them. I feel often that the work I'm doing at the center is way out on the margins. Because it is. It just simply is. But it is from the margins that we can critique what's going on. It's from the margins that you can tell the truth. But it's also sometimes difficult to be in the margins. So when someone comes, when people come along like Jeff and Laura. And they take your work seriously. And I'd like to say I'm probably skipping forward too much Laura. But Laura made Look and See. Laura and Jeff made Look and See. And then they have done other work. And then they came back to the issues that they dealt with in look and See. So the meaningful thing to me is that unlike a lot of people who come to the Barry center. Or come to visit my father or write my father or whatever, they were done with the subject. And that is. That is just deeply meaningful to me and helpful to me. I mean, the subject is agrarianism. The subject is making decisions with land, thinking about the health of the land. We all need to be agrarians. Because we all live from the land, although we seem to have forgotten it.
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C
So
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B
Laura took on a. Laura and Jeff took on a heck of a task and they did a beautiful job. And then they, then they saw things that needed to be talked about further, look and see further. And they took up that job as well. I was raised by my parents along with my brother. There was a question that you sent me today, Ben, that said, what's happened to Wendell Berry's adult children? Well, Wendell Berry's adult children are grandparents now and I run the Berry Center. I farm full time until I started the Berry Center. My brother farms full time about 10 miles from where I'm sitting. But we were raised without television and junk food and Coke and all kinds of things that I thought were looked highly delightful. And I spent a good deal of my growing up years complaining about the situation that I had found myself in and would say. I remember saying to dad, why do we have to do everything the hardest way possible? But maybe I say in the film, I don't remember, Laura, but you know, I never really disagreed with them. I never really thought they were wrong. And they have been. I mean they've. I can say now at the ripe old age of 67 that I have parents that never disappointed me. They have just simply lived out their values. And I think when people, people get kind of upset about Daddy's unwillingness to buy a computer or his unwillingness to watch telev, which is interesting to me. I mean, Daddy has made decisions, my parents have made decisions about the way they want to live, the one life they have to live. They've lived according to those principles, those values. I tell you, those two can stick with something. So anyway, I don't even remember what the. If there was a question. I don't know.
- [13:43]
A
Thanks so much, Mary, that's wonderful. Yeah, Laura, I was wondering if. And Mary, I'd welcome your thoughts on this as well. Just to kind of take us back to the moment when this film was being made, I was wondering if you could sort of share some memories from the actual filming process at this point. The film, I think, was originally released in 2018. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to produce it and be in Kentucky and film these subjects?
- [14:15]
C
Sure. Well, I knew early on I wanted the natural world and landscape to be a full blown character in the film as it is in Wendell's work. And so I knew that we wanted to and I also knew that the place is obviously so essential. So how can you really get to know a place intimately? So I Knew very much I wanted to film in the same place all four seasons. And, you know, with a lot of documentaries, you don't have all the funding up front. You get a little bit of funding and then you go shoot and then you edit that and then you get more funding and then you go shoot, you know, if all goes well. And we shot it over the course, I believe, of about four years, maybe, no maybe the film took four years to make. So we shot it over the course of at least a couple of years because, you know, we would shoot fall and then we would go home. We were living in Texas at the time. And then we'd try to get winter, but we might not have the funding, so we might get spring and then have to wait until the following year to shoot winter. So it was a lot of that. We would go for, you know, as long as we had money for, we'd stay as long as we could. And each season we were there and, you know, have a wonderful day. Director of photography, Lee Daniel and a wonderful sound recordist, Justin Hinard. And it was usually a four person crew. It were usually. Sometimes we had an ac, sometimes we didn't. Sometimes Jeff was ac. We often had at least three or four children running around. Jeff and I have seven children now. I think we had four kids in the course of making this family. So there were often babies. I know one time we were filming in the snow and I had a baby strapped to me. And at some point Mary said, do you want me to take the baby? And she took our little baby into a warm place so that I could keep filming in the snow. That particular shoot, we were in Kentucky 17 days, hoping and hoping for snowfall. And I believe it snowed like on day 16. And boy, was it a beautiful snow. Know. So, yeah, I mean, there's. There's a lot too. There's so many memories, you know, I will say I remember. And each time I would go, I would have a conversation with Wendell, so he would graciously allow me to come visit with him and we would just record the audio and we would talk about different things. And sometimes he'd be in a good mood and sometimes not so much. And sometimes I'd ask rambling questions and be kind of embarrassed afterwards. And other times he would surprise me, you know, And I think that it was in those conversations that at one point early on he said to me, you know, are you being changed by this? How is your thinking changing? Because I was telling him about the footage I shot and the interviews I did and and it was really a very profound moment to me because he said, you're the product, not the film. You are the product. And, boy, has that stayed with me, you know, that the process of making the film should change me, and that just changing the way one person sees the world is far more valuable than having a film screen at Sundance, you know, So I was blessed to have that time in Henry County, Kentucky. And I know Jeff is. Jeff is driving our kids around right now, so he's on, but just in audio only. But I. We both felt deeply transformed by the time with the berries and with the community there. And I remember one good thing is coming to mind. One of the farmers said to us, it's a hard life, but it's a good life. And I think my time there has greatly influenced my own values, the way we raise our children, the way we live our lives, the choices we make. So our. It was hard, and it was good doing that film, and we're really changed for it and grateful for it.
- [18:29]
A
Thank you, Laura. Mary, do you have any memories of the time, the filmmaking period as well, or were you present and involved while that was happening in Kentucky as well?
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B
Some of it. When I'm on camera, I was certainly involved, and Laura and Jeff were around. I absolutely remember that afternoon with Deacon in our house when you all were up the hill shooting whatever you were shooting. The film has become kind of a collection of people and animals and so on that are no longer with us. So the horses in the film. A lot of the filming was done on our farm, my husband's and my farm, the little white house with the two horses and so on. The two horses are gone. The dog is gone, but kind of touches my heart more. People like Peck, Payton are gone. I mean, they've left us. And so it's gotten really kind of poignant to see the movie. And my father's voice is different than it was then now, so. And anyway, I certainly remember having them there. I remember making the biscuits when the kids were with us. What, three kids then, probably. And then baby Deacon.
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C
Yeah. Yes. There's always so many. It's hard to keep.
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B
But anyway, you know, sweet. Sweet to have them around, wait to see him now all grown up.
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C
I know
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A
this is a question for both of you, so feel free to answer in whatever order. But I guess I'm kind of curious. As you were making the film, presumably you had some thoughts about what it would turn into in the final form, But I'm kind of curious. Were there. Yeah. Laura, as you were Making the movie? Did you have a vision of the final product that was maybe different than what it wound up actually being? How close to maybe your sort of idea for the film was the final product? And I guess, Mary, from your end, you know, sort of as the film was being produced, did you have thoughts about what it might wind up being? And were you, you know, did you have any skepticism before you saw the film? How did the final film maybe correspond to the experience of its creation for both of you?
- [21:15]
C
I can jump in, Mary, unless you want to have something you want to say. Sure.
- [21:20]
B
Who made the film?
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C
Well, I mean, the initial idea was to sort of make a film about sort of followed the contours of the unsettling of America. That was sort of the issues driving that book were really where I started. And I hope that the film gets at those. So that was sort of the guiding force. Now I will say something about just my own process with documentary. I really like to get lost in the material. I like to sort of discover is the whole part of it. I think it's the most honest way to make a film. And so I gather material and I gather, gather, gather. I talk to someone who tells me to talk to someone else who tells me to talk to someone else. And I knew I was making a portrait of his mind's eye, a portrait of his world, but I didn't really know what that would look like. And so Tanya would usually give me a list of people to talk to and I would go and talk to them and film. And, you know, Terrence Malik, who's one of my wonderful mentors, he always taught me as someone who's sort of journalist and literal minded, he would say, you know, put that aside, don't follow the chronology. You want to edit like a piece of music, like a symphony, let a theme come in and then go out. Let a character come in and then go out. And, you know, I think I read everything I could of Wendell's. I knew all of his. I knew a lot of his books. I hadn't read much of his fiction. So I spent the first six months just reading. And I had all that text in the back of my mind. And then I'm in the world and I'm just sort of following intuition. And. And it's really. I find it in the editing. I find the stories in the editing. You know, there were certain farmers that I didn't expect to meet, but I did like Mark Roberts, the large scale farmer. And I returned to him because there was such a juxtaposition between his story and some of the other farmers. And I think the juxtaposition is really important in a documentary because it allows the viewer to synthesize meaning for themselves, as opposed to me sort of telling you what to think, which I never want to do. And because I don't like movies like that, you know, I want to discover for myself. And so I think I'm trying to kind of create an honest portrait that gives the viewer an opportunity and gives the viewer space to discover for themselves the connections. I will say that most of the time I find the story in the edit. And that was certainly the case with this. And I was really struggling with a narrative structure. And I remember sitting in like middle of the night editing, and I had all these Wendell books on my shelf. And I was like, how do I structure this? And I remember, like just picking up some of his books of essays and thinking like, yeah, the way he organizes his books, his nonfiction books of essays, is they're thematic. You know, you'll have a chapter and it will be margins, right? And then you'll have another chapter and it's something else. And they're sort of poetic words that just give you a little bit of structure. But the series of essays doesn't necessarily follow a sort of three act structure. And so I thought, you know, that's an honest way to structure this, that mirrors his work. So I could go on and on, but those are some kind of answers that come to mind. Ben, from your question.
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A
Yeah, that's fascinating. Thanks, Laura. Yeah. Mary, how about you? Did you have. Before you saw the final cut of the film, did you have sort of an idea about what it was, it might be? Or did you have maybe concerns about how it would look in the final version? And then what was your sort of reaction to seeing the finished product when it was released?
- [25:04]
B
I did not have an idea in my mind of what this film would be like. I've not watched many documentaries in my life, and I didn't. No, I didn't even try. I was starting the Berry center and doing that work, which was all consuming and still is, I'll tell you. Laura sent a trailer, I guess is what you would call it. Laura, you sent it. Leon began editing. Or maybe you weren't even through shooting. I don't remember. And I remember calling you and saying, you can stop now. Because first of all, I thought it was beautiful. I hadn't, you know, it was a revelation to see it. And then it appeared to me that my husband and I, in the Trailer were speaking to each other and we were not. And we were not married at the time, nor were we thinking about getting married at the time or were we talking at the time. So I remember saying, I think you should just do make a film about Steve and me. But she didn't. She went on and did more, but it was. Yeah, that's when I began. When I saw that. How many minutes? I don't know, Laura, and I don't even know the name of what you said. I think you were using it to fundraise maybe.
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C
Yeah, it was probably a cut. It was probably a cut.
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B
Let people know what you were working on. And that was when I first thought, okay, I sort of see now. And this is beautiful. It's extremely beautiful movie.
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C
I think.
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B
Film. Excuse me? Film.
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C
Same thing.
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A
Thanks so much, Mary. So I'm going to ask a sort of a two part question and you can take either part or both, I guess. And then I think it would be great to move on to some questions from our audience because we have a whole lot of questions from folks who have joined us tonight. I guess looking back, Laura, can you name or think of what were the particular challenges of making this movie? Is there anything sort of in the making of the movie or even after the movie was made and you're sort of finding an audience for it? What were the harder, more challenging parts of putting this together? And also maybe on the flip side of that, looking back at the film, what parts of it do you view as the most meaningful or the most successful? When you watch the film now, what parts jump out to you and you sort of think like that is even better than I remembered it, or maybe it was something that kind of happened accidentally or was just sort of an outgrowth of the filmmaking process. So I guess the question is sort of challenges and maybe unexpected successes. Looking back, what, what highlights from the film leap out to you today?
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C
Well, I would say in terms of the unexpected great success, I mean, number one certainly would be even the possibility that it played some role in matchmaking between Steve and Mary. I mean, what could be better than that? And I mean that genuinely and sincerely. And when you ask about the challenges, I would say the very first thing that pops up into my mind without question, by far the hardest thing is juggling filmmaking. While I had lots of little children, you know, Wendell said to me when I was wrestling with this idea and I had all these kids and I'm trying to work and I'm feeling like I'm just torn apart because I'm these two parts of myself, they always feel at war. And he said, oh, no, with kids, you just keep them with you. Just keep the kids with you. You need to do work that allows them to be with you. And that's what we've done. And it is hard, and I am so grateful for it. Jeff and I have seven kids, and their age is 20 to 5. And so while the making of this film, I had four babies, including twins. I had twins. In the course of making this movie, I think we had, like, we had six kids, 10 and under, you know, by the end of this film, I think we premiered it, and I had the littlest one in a. In a carrier. He was six months old. So by far, you know, that's the hardest part. The filmmaking itself is kind of easy compared to parenting. And doing both at the same time is really hard. And I think, you know, just the. I think the hardest thing is probably the flip side of it is also the greatest joy is that, you know, I would say I don't know what the right verb is. If it's earning, I'm hesitant to use that. But. But the trust of the Barry family was not easy to come by, and for good reason. And I know how so many people in the film world are. They're. Jeff, my husband used to say they're like minors. They're like mountaintop removal. They go into a community. I won't name names, Mary, but they go into the community. They take what they want, they preten. They care, and they. They mime the community. They shoot their footage, they get their interviews, they have their broadcast, and they're nice, and then they leave. And I know that's how most filmmakers are, and we're not that way, but it took a while. It took a long time, I think, to. To. To learn their trust, I should say say, as opposed to earn it. So, you know, that was the hardest part by far. And in addition to having kids, but then also the greatest joy, Mary, is to hear you say that the film means something to you and your family. So, you know, those go together.
- [31:14]
A
Thanks so much, Laura. That's a really wonderful answer. So I thought we could now pivot to some questions we've gotten from the audience. And, you know, there's a whole lot of topics to cover. So, you know, we're going to do our best to get to as much as we can. But one question that has come up a few times from a number of different people is this element of faith in Wendell Berry's mind and writing One viewer from Virginia writes, when I read Wendell Berry's work, the faith element often feels integral to what and how he thinks about farming, industrialization, politics, et cetera. And then another viewer said, the film did not mention his faith. But can you give us some information about that, please? And how it sort of frames his views of farming and the world more. More generally. So maybe, Mary, you could. You could address that question. And then, Laura, I'd love to hear what you have to say as well.
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B
Well, my father is Christian.
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C
And
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B
of course, it's with my father and my mother. Their faith is integrated into everything they do. Of course. Isn't that what we're all trying to do? My father is an uncomfortable churchgoer. He gave a speech once at a seminary in Louisville and said he has rarely been comfortable in front of a pulpit and is never comfortable behind one. But he goes to what he refers to as your mother's church. My mother plays the piano every Sunday in the church at Port Royal. He sits in the pew that his great grandfather sat in, and he sees his grandchildren and so on. And he loves the people there. I don't mean to say that he doesn't. He does. But my father is now very deaf. And so now he sits and enjoys and looks at the children and reads the Bible while he's there. And so I think he's probably a more comfortable churchgoer now than he's ever been. But certainly there's the. He believes that the earth is. That we have a given life, that the earth is not ours, that we are to care for it. Well, people who have questions about that should pick up his Sabbath poems. They should pick up a novel called Jabra Crow. One in particular, I think. Any of them you can pick up and you can see. Laura, I was really interested to hear you say that you hadn't read the fiction much. You know, for me, that's where the vision is. The vision of what we're after. That's where that lives. And if people are wondering about his faith, they can find it in the fiction. They can find it in everything he's written.
- [34:42]
A
Thank you, Mary. That's great. Laura, did you have thoughts about sort of the decision to not include that discussion in the film? Or was it something that you had thought about or had sort of crossed your path in the filmmaking, or you
- [34:57]
B
just is in the film? I mean, when Daddy's speaking in the film, he's speaking from his faith.
- [35:06]
C
You know, I think. I think it's a really interesting question and not a question I've gotten before, maybe, and I think it's an important question, and I kind of reflect on it. And I think that, like, Mary, I mean, I definitely had conversations with him about theology and about Christian faith. And I think I understood from him, and I've read a lot of his work about this. You know, I. I think. I think I understood from him that, you know, having grown up a Southern Baptist, he knows the Bible really well, and. But he doesn't want to preach in a didactic way and sort of. I think Mary said it best. I mean, the way I hit the text is that his faith is foundational to the way he sees the world. So it's interleaved, it's woven throughout. I mean, there's pieces of his poetry that they say the word God, but there's a lot of times where you feel the presence of God in his words without a kind of literal sermon. So I think the film, in a way, is trying to reflect that. I don't remember having some kind of conscious decision to include. Include certain things and not others. I think my focus was farming. But, you know, there are churches in the film. There's crosses in the films. There's times where he talks about the Hebrew, Judeo, Christian worldview. But, you know, I think it's worth saying for a minute here that I'm an independent filmmaker, and for the most part, we're dependent on getting our films funded by granting organizations that are hostile to Christianity and then premiering films and film festivals that are even more hostile to Christianity. And so maybe to some degree, I've internalized a kind of quietness with that and a carefulness to represent something truthfully and honestly, but without alienating or antagonizing people who might be uncomfortable with that. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but the question makes me reflect on that a little bit.
- [37:19]
B
Well, I'd like to add that Daddy grew up in a Baptist church. I would hesitate at this point to call it a Southern Baptist church. I mean, that has a connotation that's very different now than it used to have. Okay. He was raised by agrarian parents. They went to the local church. We go to the local church. We're not going to. I've never gone to a church because it was a part of a denomination. I've been to two in my life. One is eight miles from the other one. So that's the sum total of my experience in church going. But I also want to say that I think Daddy's work speaks A lot about the separation that modern Christianity has brought to bear on the Earth and the destruction it's caused, that we're always. I mean, the unsettling of America starts with the white people. Came here looking for something else. Church is full of, you're here. I heard a preacher preaching a funeral not very long ago, and he referred to this wonderful woman's life on Earth as her time in a Hotel or Motel 6. And now she'd gone to what we're all after, which is milk and honey and gold and so on. This is absolutely not what my father thinks. I mean, he write in his new book called Mars Catlett. He writes in the voice of Andy Catlett. He says he's talking about his father's decision to leave Washington, D.C. and to come home. And when Andy Catlett, or when, excuse me, when Wheeler Catlett is making that decision. Old Andy in the book prays for his young father. Oh, stand by him. Let him come home. My grandfather did come home, and he made an essential difference for generations of farmers in Kentucky and other states. I say that only to say that I can't explain it any better than that. But I know that my father's understanding of time and how we're all connected always is. To try to understand it is to better understand my father's work. And that wasn't very clear, but I can't be much clearer than that.
- [40:11]
C
Oh, that was good. Yeah.
- [40:14]
A
Thank you so much, Marianne, Laura, for that really rich and nuanced answer to that question. I think the next question I want to ask is also, I guess, about sort of connection, connection between sort of disparate experiences. So one of our viewers writes, I grew up on a farm and went through the 1980s farm crisis. So this hits home for me. But as the film points out, fewer people have any connection to farming. Now, do you think they will understand how serious this is? Or will they think this is nostalgia or somehow miss the point? And then another person writes in, for those of us who do not live in rural areas, for those of us who maybe live in cities or suburbs, what is the connection to these stories of American farming in rural America? Why does it matter to people who live outside of those places? And why should they pay attention to these stories?
- [41:12]
C
Mary, you should go.
- [41:14]
B
Well, first of all, the connection is. Let's just start with eating. My father doesn't like this, but I'll say it anyway. There's a quotation that's used of his all over the place. It's eating is an agricultural act. He says he hasn't written for 70 years to come up with bumper stickers, but I think it's a very effective quote. I think that this country. I think that the people in this country have forgotten that this country is not just our military, it's not just our economy, it's not just our institutions. It's the land that is our country, and we live from that land. And we are just seem. We seem to destroy. We just seem to be determined to make living from that land more and more difficult. It seems to me that it's a homeland security issue that more farmers in this country now are over 75 than under 35. This should matter to everyone. We should have land use policies in this country. We should have regional economies so that the land will have a voice and the people will have power. We should have a vision for health and harmony and so on. And we need to get that scale better. We need to be able to think smaller. And we can do it. We can do it. We've done it at the Barry Center. We have brought to bear a better economy for our young farmers here who are raising cattle in just an amazingly short amount of time. We've seen improvement in spirit, in community, in communication, and so on. So I think we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact. And this program isn't long enough to go farther into it than I just did, but we need to reconcile ourselves to the fact that it's going to take a long time to turn this around, but once we start, things will start to get better. Hope is not difficult for me anymore. Because if you have the scale right and you're doing the right thing that's right in front of you to do, you can see improvement. You can see things getting better. And so why should this matter to people who live in cities? Why wouldn't it? My father says I'm going to get all of us in trouble with this one, but I'll say it anyway. Every Fourth of July, he says, when the world's the most dependent people the world has ever seen celebrate their independence, I mean, we've got to get to the. You know, people have got to begin to think about doing some things for themselves and working toward that idea that doing work with your body is not bad. Working with your body and your mind is what we're created for. What are people for? My father has asked. I could go on for about 40 more minutes, but I'm going to stop.
- [44:43]
A
Yeah. Thanks so much, Barry. Laurie, did you have a response to that just from your work on the film and your knowledge of Barry as well?
- [44:53]
C
Well, you know, I was living in Austin, Texas while I was working on this movie and there's a lot of people that shop at Whole Foods and, you know, drive Teslas and think of themselves as very eco conscious and buy the organic food and. But have a lot of disdain for rural culture, rural places, rural people. And I think that disconnect is a grave, grave problem. And so I think that Mary said it much better than I could about how important it is to understand the places that, where our food comes from. And we need to have a lot more love and respect for not just the land, but for the people who live there and do that work. And so I think that's, you know, why I wanted to make a portrait that really celebrated these people and the beauty and of the culture. And anyway, I think that conversation is essential for our future and our security.
- [45:54]
A
And so, yeah, yeah, thank you both so much. So I'm going to pivot to a slightly different question. And Laura, I don't know, maybe if Jeff is on the call, maybe he will pop in to answer this, but a number of people had questions about the woodcuts that are featured in the film. People praise them for their beauty and we're also just kind of curious about their inclusion. So could you or Jeff kind of talk about the inclusion of those pieces and the artist behind them?
- [46:23]
C
Jeff, I think he just unmuted himself. So take it.
- [46:27]
D
Yeah, well, can you hear me?
- [46:28]
A
Yeah, I was just going to add
- [46:31]
D
on that last question. The simple answer is the reason you should care is that you will die without these people. That's a pretty simple, like you need them to keep you alive. So that's motivated. But with respect to the wood engravings, the basic idea, I think it's really inspired by Laura's approach, but it's a verite approach, which is saying when you think about putting a film together and filling in the gaps, if you can derive from the source material and from the values and the style guide of the artist in question, then you can make it very consistent. And so we just talked about, look, these wood engravings by Wesley Bates are throughout many of his letterpressed works. If he would really be willing, if that artist would be willing to work with us on original designs, this would really just speak to our respect for the entire continuum that these published works have, as opposed to just inventing our own arbitrary design and imposing it on there. So it was really a derivation from what was there as opposed to our imposing standards. And Wesley Bates is an absolutely delightful, truly accomplished artist, utterly humble. And so please look him up. Look his website up. Wesleybates.com he's just. If it's out there, he's just wonderful. So that's where that came from. And it was iterative. I would also add the ending sequence. A vision was not in the original release of the film. And when we played the film, Tanya said, you know, this ends just sadly. I think it needs one more element. And we said, what? And she said, well, I think you should have this poem. It's my favorite poem. So we went back and talked about it and said, let's make this entire thing derived from wood engravings and come up with some new ones. And so we built that sequence and attached it to the film. And that actually was what played at the Sundance release, I believe it was not in the south by Southwest premiere, but the Sundance release. So that's a good question, but I hope that's a good answer. And we also, just briefly, we got to use Leslie at the end to have this subtle under the credits attestation of its hardship. Is this possibility? Because I don't think. I can't think of any harder work than to work for, you know, so many hours to get one single image. So his work is representative of the entire values that farming embodies. And so it really was logical and we wanted to be analog and not digital. So I'm done. Next question.
- [49:13]
A
Thanks so much, Jeff. That's wonderful. So another question that I'm seeing a handful of people ask in a few different ways is about farming and young people and sort of like, hope for the future for rural America. So Lori Rosenberg from rural Michigan asks, how about ways for young people to train and enter farming? Another writer, Ayla from the Arid west, writes, in my opinion, a lot of the rampant troubles of our youth stem from utter despair about a meaningless future. How can we reverse this? And so we also had a few questions about the presence of Barry's work and this film in schools as teaching materials for children. So I was curious, Mary and Laura, if you could talk about, about the message for the next generation. Do you see younger people becoming interested in farming and sort of taking up the mantle of Barry's project? And what advice maybe would you have for younger people who are inspired by this work and want to make it more part of their own lives?
- [50:21]
B
You want me to start?
- [50:22]
C
Yeah.
- [50:25]
B
Well, I'll give the simple answers first. At the Barrett center, we have an education program called the Farm and Forest Institute that's teaching the Skills that are needed to farm and to farm well and to work toward making a living farming. And also the great canon of agrarian literature that my father belongs to. So we're teaching the humanities and the skills and so on. And there are other places in the country certainly that are teaching those skills. It is indeed a difficult, difficult time. My answers to this before COVID would have been easier to give because before COVID it was still possible and the farmers were working with it at the Berry center in the program, our home place. Meet all of them. There are 10 young farm families and they've all bought farms and they bought them before COVID when land prices, I mean, it's a proper challenge for them to pay for farms. And there's a lot of work going on off the farm, but it could be done. Land here was still selling at a reasonable price. We're close proximity to big cities, medium sized cities, maybe for people watching or people in New York City. Ben. So it was indeed possible. It's harder now. The reason I started the Berry center and was to continue the work of my grandfather, which bringing farmers together to give them some power in the marketplace and most importantly, an asking price for what they're selling that involves production control in order to maintain parity or fair pricing and so on and so forth. This is the kind of work that I think we need more of in this country right now. We have large and industrial agriculture or we have small and entrepreneurial agriculture. We have almost nothing in the middle. The middle's where we need to put something if we're going to support farmers who could actually feed the cities. That unless we can go on transporting food 1500 miles forever and it's crazy to think that we can, we're going to have to support farming in the middle. I'm all for small and entrepreneurial. I do the best I can to support them. I mean, my husband and I both got through. I paid for farms with small entrepreneurial farming on bigger farms. So I think people should begin to go to work on these problems. Take an inventory of what you've still got to work with, what's still working, what's not working, what's missing, what should be here that's not here, those kinds of questions. I did that with the Berry Center. I mean, the questions were, what's left to work with? Well, we have something left of an agrarian culture. We have close proximity to markets, we have abundant rainfall. Those kinds of questions that grounds you where you are. Unlike the local food movement that has not been at all grounded in local agriculture, the culture of agriculture, which is essential. So the local food movement here asked us as young farmers to suddenly be producing organic broccoli and so on. Well, the culture wasn't ready for that, and it doesn't. It takes a while to change that. And we also have some very good vegetable producers here now. My husband was one. My husband, by the way, is Steve Smith, who stars in Laura and Jeff's movie and is the brilliant person on a swing using curse words. I just think that we need to recognize how important these people are and build from what we've got. So save what we've got and build from there.
- [55:13]
C
Yeah. And I would just add, I mean, Mary's the one who can speak to all of those questions much better than me. But I will just add from the perspective of someone who's not a farmer, that what's so wonderful about the message that Wendell relays and now his family relays is, is that you don't have to fix the whole world. You can't. You know, he says when I ask him my sort of rambling question about how it's all so despairing and there's no hope and, and he just kind of interrupts me and says, we all come from divorce. And, you know, you take two things and put them back together. Not all things, two things. And he, he, he graciously says, you know, whether you're making a film or you're building a stool, and you know, whether you have a, whether you're a farmer or you're a stay at home mom, you know, it's all the same work. And the, the fact that it's. The problems are so large is no excuse because we can simply just take our two hands every day and do the good work and that's all we can do. And that's really empowering. And if you take that to heart, then you can see how terrible the world is. And yet you can still have hope and you can still have faith every day. And what's amazing is you look around and you start seeing there's lots of other people who are doing this too. And as long as we kind of keep our eyes on each other, you know, we'll be okay.
- [56:44]
B
I don't think in my work at the Barry center that I think I'm responsible to do the best work I can with the great people who work with me every day. I'm absolutely responsible to give it everything I've got. I am not responsible for the outcome. Yeah. So that keeps me on today and of course I have to be provisional and think about, think as far ahead as I need to. But yeah, it's a very helpful thing to think that you just two things back together and yeah, it's just a question of scale.
- [57:25]
A
Yeah. Thank you both so much. Well, this hour has really raced by. It's kind of hard to believe. It's almost seven o'. Clock. Before we wrap up, Laura, I wanted to talk a little bit about the series of short films that you just released. And also a handful of people have written about ways that they can view, look and See now that the screening period is over. So could you talk a little bit about the new series look and See Further and how folks can view that and also maybe how folks can view your films outside of this screening period.
- [57:54]
C
Thank you so much for that question. So we have a website and it's twobirdsfilm.com and we now distribute the film directly to, through our, to our audiences. So you can rent the film, you can stream the film, you can buy DVDs. All of we're just a mom and pop shop. So that's how you can see the film again. And you know, Mary had been saying to me for a while that, yeah, it's a great film, Laura, but we need some short films. You know, because she's an activist, she's boots on the ground, she needs tools to do her work. And it took us a while because we were working on another project. But we came back and I had a thought, you know, a couple of years ago. I said all of these like gems, these just gems that are just sitting on a hard drive, the outtakes from the film. We shot a hundred hours of footage and I have hours and hours with Wendell and all this wonderful material. And the idea that it would just be on a vault somewhere kind of made me sick. So I said, in the spirit of the agrarian ethos of let nothing go to waste, right? If you're gonna kill a chicken, you're gonna use every last piece of that chicken in some way. And I thought, well, let's just take the scraps, the so called, which really may end up being the best part, and see what we can make with it. It was really an editing project and it was a delight. And so we cut a series of short films from the outtakes. Some of them are 25 minutes, there's some that are five minutes. And you know, you learn a little bit more about Tanya, for example, or you hear more about some of the farmers in the film. You want to learn more about them. You hear more about Wendell's window or the one that I think Mary was talking about that I really made for Mary is called the Burley Tobacco Growers Program. And you hear from Wendell's father and his brother and you learn the history. I noticed a lot of those questions were about kind of the problems of tobacco. So if you have questions about kind of the ethics involved in growing and even defending a crop like tobacco, you know, the Burleigh Tobacco Growers Program will, will give a lot of insight into that. So those short films we call look and See Further and we are streaming them only from our website. So we just released those this fall and in a kind of radical move, we're not trying to to sell them to anyone else except for people who are actually care about them. So you can also see those through two birds film.com wonderful.
- [60:21]
A
Thanks so much Laura. And we'll include a link to those in a follow up email to everybody on this call.
- [60:26]
C
Thank you.
- [60:28]
A
So it's seven o'. Clock. I want to thank Mary and Laura so much for spending this hour with us and thank you all for joining us for this Q and A. Stay tuned for a recording of this talk. So we'll be posting that to our YouTube channel and we'll be sharing it as a podcast in the coming days. I just want to mention a few other upcoming events from Library of America. On March 10, poet and teacher Edward Hirsch is going to return for a new four part course exploring the transformative language, ideas and emotions that animate American poetry and connect it to our everyday lives. This will have close readings of work by Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg and Gwendolyn Brooks, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost and many others. You can find registration details on loa.org and on March 12, our LOA Live series of free online programs will return with a panel focused on short stories addressing the meanings of the American Revolution and the Declaration of independence, which turns 250 this year. Join scholars Michael Gora, Wendy Williams and Brenda Winapple for a journey into four classic tales that shed new light on our nation's origins and the dawn of our literature. Stay tuned for details in your email and on our website in the coming days. Thank you again, Mary and Laura, and I hope all of you have a wonderful rest of your night. Take care.
- [61:44]
C
Thank you, Mary.