As far as documentaries go, The Garden, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Film, has everything that I love in this genre of film. It is a film that depicts the battle for a 14 acre piece of land in south central Los Angeles following the 1992 LA riots. The main players in this political, economic and racial war were the mainly Latino farmers who had planted a community garden here, black community leaders and greedy land developers. The man who owned the land originally had allowed the farmers to use it as an urban garden, and then he suddenly demanded that they raise the funds to purchase it or he would sell it to someone else. Shockingly, these mainly poor people, and almost half of them illegal immigrants, managed to raise the 16 million dollars the owner had demanded. They did this with fund raisers and a little help from some famous activists, but the owner suddenly changed his mind. In the end, the farmers watched their plants and vegetables
and fruit trees bull-dozed to the ground.

The director does a brilliant job of portraying each of the sides in this conflict, and he manages to create a powerful story of the complex and competing agendas. While for me there was no way that I couldn’t be sympathetic to the poor farmers, it did explore some of the reasons for opposing their quest to keep on farming the land. I also found the ending rather heart-wrenching, and given that the land is still not developed and is literally just standing there and not being used for anything, the winners seem heartless. The one feature of this film that I was most surprised about was how the African-American community was pitted against the Latino farmers, and I would have expected there to be solidarity between the two poor communities. The racial overtones to this movie were certainly as prevalent as the political ones, and it showed me just how race and politics are completely intertwined in the US, especially the poor areas of the larger cities.

There are interviews with famous activists who helped raise money for the farmers, such as Willie Nelson, Danny Glover, Martin Sheen and Daryl Hannah. In the end, as the owner said in a complete about-face, no amount of money would make him keep his word and sell to the farmers, and while I found this to be cold and ruthless, it was also without a sensible reason. The Garden is a fascinating glimpse of life after the LA riots, and anyone who is interested in history, race relations, or even urban development should rent this DVD.

Rating: 8