The New Alchemists
1974 · 28m · Canada
Directed by Dorothy Todd Henaut
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
On a Massachusetts farm in the 1970s, a community experiments with sustainable food production and small-scale solar and wind technology as an alternative to large-scale industrial living.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone wants to mythologize the '70s counterculture as radical, but Henaut just... watches. No manifesto, no hero's journey—just people trying to grow food and tinker with solar panels, which somehow feels more subversive than any polemic could be.
A quietly rigorous entry in the essay-documentary tradition, where Henaut's patient observational eye and measured pacing position this farm as both archive and argument—the kind of film that rewards repeat viewing and anchors a retrospective on documentary form.
Henaut's decision to let the work speak for itself—those careful shots of hands in soil, the unhurried rhythm of the edit—transforms what could've been earnest hippie cheerleading into something genuinely moving about labor and intention.