Island Green
2013 · 25m · Canada
Directed by Millefiore Clarkes
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
Prince Edward Island farmers and poet Tanya Davis question whether industrial monocropping is linked to high cancer and respiratory rates, asking what would happen if the island went entirely organic.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Looks like a well-meaning agitprop doc about farming, which is fine, but it doesn't *subvert* the essay-film form—it genuflects to it. The premise is sensible and the politics are correct, which is precisely why it won't stick in anyone's craw.
Clarkes situates this squarely in the lineage of Grierson-school documentary and the contemporary essay film, letting contemplative form and Tanya Davis's reflective voicing do the argumentative work rather than mounting a polemic—formally assured and intellectually honest in a way that rewards close attention.
The quiet decision to center a poet's voice over the farmers' testimony is what rescues this from straightforward advocacy; Davis's measured cadence and the tender pacing around the agricultural sequences transforms the whole thing from data into something genuinely felt, even on a modest budget.