The Seeds of Vandana Shiva

Rating: 8/10

Directors: Camilla Denton Becket and James Becket

Writers: Camilla Denton Becket, James Becket and Anthony Ellison

Style: Documentary

Time: 1 hour 12 minutes

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/@theseedsofvandanashiva4082

Review by Mike Szymanski

Few people in the world can speak pearls of wisdom all the time, and be quoted all the time, and are still saying something meaningful and important to the world.

That’s maybe how Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi, and Mark Twain may have been in their day. Today, Vandana Shiva is one of those voices where everything she says is quotable.

And not listening to her is at your peril.

With a bigger-than-normal red bindi on her forehead (and she has a reason for that), Shiva is the voice of the global food movement and an important major voice to promote safe food for the world.

This documentary follows her from her home in India to the Himalayan mountains, from speaking to a handful of farmers in a small village to speaking to world leaders at international conferences.

What she says is educational, scientific and sensible, and of course, controversial. She is fighting big companies, such as Monsanto, and hoping to protect the small individual farmer, whom she explains, is truly the most free and unencumbered entrepreneur in the world. A farmer can take a little bit of soil, some water and some seed, and create his own food and be independent of anyone else or any other big company. And people are threatened by that.

If you don’t know her name, you should. If you already do know about her, this will show a different side of her than you ever knew. They show her good side and a view from her harsh critics, too. This documentary of Vandana Shiva will scare you, inspire you and motivate you. I hope.

Her bindi, she notes, represents a circle, a moving dot, and it contains a universe.

“We are in an amazing, miraculous, interconnected universe, all our dots. Why not display it more? I also have a big nose,” she adds.

As serious as her topics get, she has a grand sense of humor. And when she plans for a protest of 5,000 and 50,000 actually show up, she knows how to handle it.

Co-director James Becket, recalls, “We were first introduced to Vandana Shiva at a series of environmental conferences almost 20 years ago. And, like most people on their first meeting with her, we realized immediately that we were in the presence of an eco-activist rock star. The more time we spent with her, and learned about her life experiences, the more we were inspired to tell her story. Her life has embodied the notion that ‘one person can make a difference’ and so we asked if we could capture her journey on film. She agreed.”

Co-director Camilla Denton Becket, of the husband and wife team, adds “Vandana speaks for an ecological vision for food and farming in which we can regenerate the environment and human democracies. Our hope is that Vandana’s extraordinary story will act as a catalyst for more awareness around the issues, and to inspire audiences to be part of the change.”

The documentary points out that today industrial food accounts for up to 40 percent of carbon emissions, while pesticides destroy soils, water systems and harm human health. And, 2 billion people face food insecurity across the globe.

Also, farmers are committing suicide because they can’t pay their debts. In an emotional scene, friends and family talk about a beloved farmer at his funeral, and how he took poison because of the money he owed and knew he could never pay back.

The scenery of her home and her life is quiet, picturesque and beautiful. The pollination, the seeds, the growth, is shown with some stunning cinematography.

In the Himalayas, where she is met with skepticism from men who want to only grow soy beans and potatoes, she explains how she gets help from the women of the villages. They helped start the villages get on their way to organic farming.

In 1994, she started training at a research farm and created a seed bank. Her timeline also shows how she created the group Chipko, which means to hug and embrace, and how the group was used to fight the “timber mafia” by tying themselves to trees that were going to be cut down.

Trained in physics, the doctor stared the global seed movement and showed how microclimates are changing because of food manipulation. She is modest, and humble, but serious. She explains why her hero is Albert Einstein, and shows the clay sculpture she created of him.

“What we call science is short period of patriarchal history,” Shiva says.

In some places Shiva is a rock star. She could quietly talk to people in a remote village and next be shouting her concerns to Parliament and the world.

“When you control arms you control an army, when you control food you control society,” Shiva says. “And when you control seed, you control life on earth.”

The documentary has won Best Feature Debut and the Manguarama Award for Conscious Documentary at the Illuminate Film Festival in Sedona, Arizona; the Best Documentary Feature at Nature Without Borders International in the United Kingdom, the Audience Award at the The Shift Your World Film Fest, the Top Five Audience Award at the Sydney Film Festival and the Jury Award at the Samskara International Film Festival in India.

Find out more on their Facebook page @vandanashivamovie and https://www.facebook.com/vandanashivamovie.

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