Screening: Edible Paradise

WHEN: Wednesday 10 October 2018

WHERE: Orana Cinemas Busselton

TICKETS: https://www.facebook.com/filmharvestgeographe/

ABOUT: Captured over five years as part of the Localising Food Project, Edible Paradise travels to the four corners of Aotearoa – New Zealand, to meet local food campaigners instrumental in creating community orchard and food forest projects in their patch.

At the pinnacle of this movement is a diverse edible environment known as a Food Forest – a collection of perennial plants grown in a multilayered natural forest ecosystem that is beneficial to humans, animals, plants and insects. This idea moves away from the monoculture crops that have become the norm in our post WW2 agrochemical-based horticulture systems.

These practical and inspiring examples embrace health-giving heritage varieties such as the ‘Monty’s Surprise’ apple. In a global apple study, this particular apple was found to have the world’s highest level of natural Bioflavonoids and Procyanidins, which have been clinically proven to reduce the replication of cancer cells.

In recent years Food Forests have become popularised around the world from Seattle to Malawi and many places in between. In New Zealand, a range of diverse communities have come together to participate at all levels of food production, harvest, appreciation and celebration to grow ‘Free Food for the People.’

Nowhere is the opportunity to come together to actively grow our future more evident than in Christchurch, a city struggling to rebuild after the devastating February 2011 Earthquake. This natural disaster destroyed almost 80 percent of the city’s buildings, and left hundreds of hectares of prime land unable to be rebuilt on.
After the houses where removed from the ‘red zones’ some people in the city had a vision to turn Christchurch, the ‘Garden City’, into the ‘Edible Garden City of the Future.’ This shift in thinking had its challenges and this film shares the journey of convincing the Christchurch City Council to turn over a new leaf by supporting the public planting of fruit and nut trees in hundreds of parks and reserves; turning often marginal land into a perennial paradise.

Edible Paradise captures the birth of the food forest movement in New Zealand that is about much more than sustainability. It is ‘he tangata’ – the people. Coming together to connect & share both this abundance and the intangible social benefits that are at the heart of community food development.