In a desert zone in southwest California, a civilian tribunal passes sentence on groups of dissidents and gives them the option of participating in law enforcement training exercises in the Bear Mountain National Punishment Park.  In an atmosphere of aggression and intimidation and in soaring temperatures, the prisoners have to fight for their lives as they are hunted down by the forces of law and order.

The film explores Bruce and Pat’s relationship with Koani. Born in captivity, Koani could only be a captive wolf. She could never roam wild nor could she be allowed to run free. For Bruce and Pat, despite all their efforts to provide for Koani’s needs, they would have to face the painful truth that they could not provide for her greatest need – to be free. As she would prove time and time again, she was a wolf – and wolves belong in the wild.

True Wolf weaves the story of Bruce and Pat’s life with Koani into the larger issue of humanity’s relationship with the wolf and wildness. Through 16 years of archival footage, supplemented by provocative interviews, stylized re-creations and stunning wolf footage, this contemporary film explores the highly polarized and contentious period before, during, and after our nation made the historic decision to return wolves to the homelands from which they’d been exterminated in the Northern Rockies.

In Canada, David Suzuki is pretty much an icon: a household name synonymous with nature and science, best known as the host of the long-running CBC TV show “The Nature of Things” and as a pioneering and passionate environmentalist. Although he is a tad less well known here south of the border, he may be the most inspiring, charming, eloquent, compelling voice for environmental sanity in the world today. At the age of 75, he shows no signs of slowing down. By all measures David Suzuki is extraordinary, and you can’t help but wish that everyone cared about the earth as much as he does—and that everyone could see Force of Nature because watching this film might make them care as much as he does. But what drove him to become the phenomenon he is? This engrossing documentary guides us through his life and reveals the key events and people that shaped him. The occasion for the film is Suzuki’s return to the University of British Columbia to deliver his legacy lecture to a sold-out audience. Director Sturla Gunnarsson interweaves Suzuki’s stirring and insightful address with candid interviews to create a captivating portrait of a man whose essential decency speaks volumes about the beauty of the planet he’s trying so hard to save.

Paris Hilton’s wikipedia page, on the other hand, took me a decent amount of time to get through. I had to lift a finger many times in order to scroll through that load [of information]. The section on her “Personal life” for instance, was fattened with more content than every single section of Regionalism combined. It was broken down into the following sub-headings: “Sex tape”, “Bling Ring burglaries”, “Heiress?” & “Legal issues” and featured a red-carpet photo of Ms. Hilton and guy she used to have sex with as well as a mug-shot.  Those pictures in just that one section (there are 7 total, with links to hundreds more) were double what Regionalism had on it’s entire page.

Sigh.

I discovered this unfortunate juxtaposition while trying to figure out why it is so difficult to get audiences to come and see a film that tells the true story of a Midwestern artist.  That artist is a man named Stan Herd, and his medium of choice is crop art. Stan takes acres of land, and using plants, soil, rock and other organic materials, creates land paintings that can only be seen from great heights; sometimes even requiring a plane or helicopter. In 1994, Stan, who has a difficult time selling his very expensive to create works, decided that taking his art to New York City, a vertical city, could get his work seen, and more importantly, recognized.

An artist without an audience, Stan needed to bring his art to people who could see the beauty in it and be the vessel through which the word spread  To stay true to his art’s purpose, Stan wanted the image he created to tell a story that reflected his goals, and one that would stand out among the rest of the art world.  Stan chose to create a work in the style of Thomas Hart Benton, a Regionalist artist (and Jackson’s Pollock’s mentor) who successfully navigated to the heights of the art world, then was derided for focusing on Midwestern people and landscapes.  Many “established” art-world players couldn’t comprehend why an artist as talented as Benton would focus on such unimportant subjects.  A cowboy boot-wearing, mustache-toting fella named Stan Herd knew exactly why Benton expressed himself in those subjects, and he decided that Benton was the perfect artist to celebrate in a city like New York.

After the months it took to create an image and the financial sacrifice his whole family endured, Stan’s masterpiece lay just off the Hudson River around 72nd Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  It took everything he had (and then some) to complete, including a crew of homeless men living in a nearby railway tunnel, but Stan had done it and it was a marvel.  The time had come for the world to see it, and Stan, along with the help of his friends, let the American media know, encouraging them to help him share his work with the world.

That part of the plan, which Stan needed in order for his vision to be celebrated, was a disaster.  The American media decided to celebrate something else entirely that day. Stan’s masterpiece, a work he named Countryside, was bulldozed soon afterwards and covered with skyscrapers for a development that Donald Trump had been planning.  Very few people outside of those who lived in the buildings nearby had the opportunity to see it.

When I met Stan more than a decade later and heard the story of Countryside, I was a film student looking for a story that I could tell via cinema.  I immediately connected with the story, and the opportunity to celebrate an art form that was, by nature, only temporary, and do so in the permanent medium of film.  It was exactly what I was looking for for my debut feature.  I, like Stan, grew up in the Midwest, and rarely get to see that part of the country celebrated.  You’d think the area they call “fly-over country” would be perfect for an artist like Stan, but the reality is that our culture seldom looks out our windows anymore.

As the fragmentation of attention of content exponentially grows, the opportunities to truly experience works like Stan’s diminish.  I see that as unfortunate and when a story that perfectly captured the essence of that subject fell into my lap, it spoke to me.  I have always known I would be a filmmaker, but never expected that I would become a filmmaker whose work could be considered Regionalism.  Like the Regionalist artists I so greatly admire, I am proud, not ashamed to focus on subjects like Stan.  Simply doing so makes my work stand out from the rest of the films crowding the marketplace today; a marketplace that seems to be a collection of attention-grabbing ventures that must fit a pre-determined genre.  EARTHWORK, my film about Stan’s creation of Countryside, doesn’t seem to fit any of the pre-existing genres, but I believe that Regionalism is about as good a label as any.  It’s the story of an artist who celebrated rural landscapes over urban ones, and tells a story that defies the rapidly developing advances in societal and media demands.  A film about a Midwestern artist that was made in the Midwest.

Now that EARTHWORK has successfully travelled the country on the film festival circuit and secured a theatrical release (not to mention the well-deserved attention John Hawkes has been getting, who shows his incredible range as a first-time leading man playing Stan Herd), I can only hope that audiences are more interested in coming to the art house theaters to see it than they are in sitting in front of their TVs and watching the latest household name eaten alive by our collective intrigue.

The communal experience of sitting in a theater and seeing Stan’s story unfold is impossible to truly appreciate without a MASSIVE screen.  Even though the story works on any screen or device, no one owns a tv big enough to see Stan’s acre-sized art be created right before their eyes.  EARTHWORK captures the incredible true story of Stan Herd creating his masterpiece, and you simply MUST see it in the theater.

In my humble opinion, Paris Hilton shouldn’t be celebrated, Stan Herd should be.  We can’t escape the fact that we will be a major factor in what future generations celebrate. Recognizing this fact doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy escapist entertainment, but it should encourage us to seek out the options that are respecting our attention, not buying it.

The good news is that we live in a culture that allows change in the form of audience participation. Whether that change comes from people choosing a film that has the potential to offer catharsis instead of escape, or me providing additional content to the Regionalism wiki page, the possibility is right there, waiting. I’m happy to start it, but without some help, the reality is . . . I can only get so far with what I have to work with.

I need the collective power of y’all to really make sure the film, and Stan’s masterpiece, is seen.

Sincerely,

Chris Ordal
writer/producer/director, EARTHWORK

Like Benton, crop artist Stan Herd is a Midwesterner with a feel for large scale and wide vistas. Writer-producer-director Chris Ordal makes his auspicious feature debut in depicting a pivotal moment in the life and career of Herd, who grew up on a Kansas farm and from an early age felt the urge to create “earthworks” — images created from plants and natural materials over large swaths of land that could be fully seen and appreciated only from the air and preserved strictly in photographs.

Herd is played to perfection by John Hawkes, Oscar-nominated for his performance in the gritty drama “Winter’s Bone.” Hawkes’ Herd is an innocent who, after years of struggle as a crop artist, has by 1994 been discovered by a successful photographer (Bruce MacVittie). That leads to his coming to New York to compete for a chance to beautify some acreage on the Upper West Side.

Herd swiftly learns he’s not in Kansas anymore, what with Manhattan prices for lumber, plants, rocks, tractor rental, etc. But he’s prepared to do whatever it takes to soldier on, and some homeless men, for whom he provides food and kindness, pitch in to help him.

As the project nears completion, having stirred media attention, “Earthwork” takes an unexpected swerve but one that adds layers of meaning and emotion to a film that is as beautiful and wrenching as it is unassuming.

— Kevin Thomas

Click here to read the article on LATimes.com

Earthwork is the story of real-life crop artist Stan Herd. In 1994, Stan traveled from Kansas to New York City and risked everything to create a massive environmental artwork on land owned by Donald Trump. The multi-acre piece was made from soil, rock, plants and vegetation near an underground railway tunnel.

Stan recruited a number of homeless individuals living in the tunnel as his crew. Over the months it took to complete the earthwork, Stan dealt with the difficulties of bringing his unique, rural art form to an urban canvas and the many costs exacted upon his life. In an effort to show his unique perspective to a larger audience, Stan unexpectedly encountered the true meaning of his art and its ultimate lasting rewards.

Click here to read director Chris Ordal’s essay on Regionalism in art and the importance of seeing EARTHWORK on the big screen

The two men set out on a roadtrip thousands of miles across the boundless lands. With them, two small birds in a cage. Along the way, as is custom for the Merjas, Miron shares intimate memories of his conjugal life. But as they reach the banks of the sacred lake where they will forever part with the body, he realizes he wasn’t the only one in love with Tanya…

View the New York Times article