Producers: Danielle Varga, Brittany Shyne, Sabrina Schmidt Gordon

Join us in the microcinema for Brittany Shyne’s breathtaking and poetic documentary portrait of centennial farmers in the geographical south. Using lyrical black and white imagery, this meditative film examines the decline of generational black farmers and the significance of owning land.

Interweaving the stories of three Black generational farmers to create a collective and intimate portrait of farming today, Seeds is a moving and powerful exploration of their lives, joys and struggles as well as the fragility of legacy and owning land. 

With remarkable intimacy, the film documents their everyday lives – cotton harvesting, chasing cows, dealing with broken machinery and financial precarities. The camera relishes simple moments – conversations through car windows, candy from grandma’s purse as it captures moments of warmth, joy and fulfillment – turning them into striking vignettes that honor the families’ connection to the land and each other. 

But the sobering reality underscores the urgency of their story. Black farmers owned 16 million acres of land in 1910 but today, that number has dwindled to a fraction. The farmers in the community struggle to access funding that white farmers nearby seem to secure with ease. 

Through these inter-generational stories, we see the cycles of inequity and embedded racism that persist to this present day, and the signs of hope and renewal with younger generations of farmers. Seeds emphasizes how human beings are innately tied to our foundational roots, roots which carry our ancestral memories – somber, bitter, and sweet.