27th IFP Market Selects Documentary Work-in-Progress About NYC Gardens that Change Lives, Transform Communities
The Healing Gardens of New York tells the story of New York City green spaces that are sources of stability and emotional well-being for neighborhoods and their residents.
(PRWEB) September 15, 2005 -- The 27th Annual IFP Market & Conference has chosen The Healing Gardens of New York, a documentary work-in-progress about New York City gardens and green spaces that change lives and transform communities for its Spotlight on Documentaries" section. The film will be screened on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 at 10:30 am at the Angelika Film Center, Theatre # 4, Houston & Mercer Streets, New York City.
....The Healing Gardens of New York captures the diversity, passion, commitment and creativity of the gardeners who help make NYC a magical place, says Kate Chura, Film Festival Organizer of the 2005 American Community Garden Association Annual Conference. These green oases have helped so many people find a beautiful joyful place to discover nature, celebrate with family" or escape, recover, build and often rebuild their lives."
The Healing Gardens of New York is the story of lives and communities that have been transformed by gardens created in response to crime, neglect, poverty and recidivism. The film features gardens ranging from a small asphalt triangle in Times Square to a spacious field on Rikers Island (the citys largest prison). In a city dominated by steel, glass, jackhammers and cranes, the importance of green spaces as a source of stability and emotional well-being is too often overlooked.
The film makes it clear that in New York the best gardens reach out.
As the story moves around New York City, each segment delves deeper into the effect of gardens on neighborhoods and individuals.
| | - On the Lower East Side, the vibrant Save Our Gardens pageant celebrates the ongoing struggle to make community gardens permanent in the face of powerful real estate developers.
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| | - In an endangered community garden in the South Bronx, local pre-schoolers hunt for earthworms and take part in their own garden pageant.
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| | - At Taqwa Community Farm in the Bronx, a man who was lost and without direction" sees a seed he planted sprout and become a tomato, changing his life.
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| | - The Cabbage Patch in Times Square, where a man who has suffered from mental illness finds increasing emotional stability through tending the garden.
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| | - The restorer of the Conservatory Garden was warned that its East Harlem neighbors would wreck her work. Instead, the garden has become a source of pride for the community.
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| | - The GreenHouse Project on Rikers Island, where inmates whose lives havent worked out find redemption in making things grow.
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| | - The Labyrinth of Contemplation in Battery Park, where city noises fade away, as a group gathers for a candlelight walk for peace.
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Alexandra Isles produced and directed The Power of Conscience: The Danish Resistance and Rescue of the Jews; Scandalize My Name: Stories from the Blacklist (hosted by Morgan Freeman) and Porraimos: Europes Gypsies in the Holocaust. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) the New York State Council for the Humanities and The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). Her films have been broadcast internationally and on PBS and featured at the Human Rights Watch, Margaret Mead, Hot Springs and Boston Jewish Film Festivals. They have received awards from the Black Maria, Chicago International and Golden Wheel Film Festivals.
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