USA / Mexico,
2005, 83 min
Shown in 2005
CREDITS
- dir
-
Taggart Siegel
- prod
-
Teri Lang, Taggart Siegel
- scr
-
John Peterson, Taggart Siegel
- cam
-
Taggart Siegel
- editor
-
Greg Snider
- source
-
Collective Eye, Inc, 442 Shotwell St, San Francisco, CA 94110. FAX: 415-647-7456. EMAIL: info@collectiveeye.org.
- gga award
-
Golden Gate Award—Bay Area Documentary Feature
-
COMMENTS
Taggart Siegel, Teri Lang and Farmer John Peterson in person.
OTHER
John Peterson is not your average Midwestern farmer. He has a passion for dirt, glitz, glitter and glamor. “I’ve been in this big struggle between my incredible love for soil,” says Peterson, “and my love for expression.” A third-generation farmer in rural Illinois, Peterson’s exposure to ’60s counterculture inspired him to turn the farm into a community for hippies and artists, but his place collapsed in the farm debt crisis of the 1980s. Bay Area director Taggert Siegel’s film takes a look at Peterson’s life as a farmer, writer and artist and the high cost he’s paid for being “different.” One opening scene shows him wearing an orange feather boa as he drives a tractor. “The community tried to run me out,” says Peterson. Abandoning the farm in despair, his deeply rooted love for the land brought him back. Today Peterson’s land is an organic Community Supported Agriculture farm producing more than 40 crops. Narrated by Peterson in his own words, The Real Dirt on Farmer John is the remarkable and inspirational story of a nonconformist’s indomitable spirit and the future of family farms in America.
—Chuleenan Svetvilas
FACTOID #300
When she attended the 1980 San Francisco International Film Festival for a tribute, Federico Fellini’s wife and muse Giulietta Masina, admitted that she accepted a bit part in the American film The Madwoman of Chaillot (despite the fact that she could not speak English) just so she could get costar Katherine Hepburn’s autograph.
