BACK TO MAIN PUBLIC EVENT PAGE
This first discussion is an invitation to discuss healing gardens. An end goal is to define what to plant in the spiral “Eye” near the southern end of the 32-acre site.
Anyone interested in influencing this dialog is welcome to attend and encouraged to participate in the evening’s discussion. To expand the brainstorming, Echo Park Film Center will bes hoing the film, “The Shaman’s Apprentice.”
NOTE
Friday Nights@Not A Cornfield programs are held rain or shine in the heated and covered Yurt, near the Not A Cornfield North Gate entrance. These events are free of charge and open to the public.
FILM PROGRAM
The Shaman’s Apprentice (Miranda Smith, 2001, 54 minutes)
Curated by Sarah McCabe and Jaime Lopez in association with Echo Park Film Center.
ABOUT THE FILM
The Shaman’s Apprentice, an award-winning documentary directed by Miranda Smith with narration by Susan Sarandon, examines Ethonobotanist Mark Plotkin’s quest to preserve the ancient wisdom of Amazonian shamans.
“For more than twenty years Dr. Mark Plotkin has searched the Amazon for plants that heal. He is an ethnobotanist, a scientist who studies the relationship between indigenous people and plants. He set out on a mission to find a cure for diabetes, a disease that killed both of his grandmothers. The Shaman’s Apprentice charts the story of Mark's discoveries, and looks at the astonishing ability of native people to manage their environment.
People of the forest have become sophisticated chemists by necessity, utilizing plants for every aspect of their lives. Often, the entire knowledge of a tribe resides in the mind of the shaman - the tribe's doctor and spiritual leader. But the shamans are also the most endangered species in the Amazon. Marooned in time by the loss of traditional ways, many of the native healers have no apprentices. Most are old, and each shaman's death is a kind of extinction. It is these shamans that Mark seeks out, hoping to save their precious knowledge, for it may be vital to the world's future.
The Shaman’s Apprentice is a story of survival against the odds. It interweaves the luminous rain forest world of phenomena and legends with western science and the grim realities of extinction. In the story of one man's quest to preserve the ancient wisdom of our species, we find intelligence, cooperation and hope that could save one of the most glorious places on Earth. “
--Text from Bullfrog Films
ABOUT THE NOT A CORNFIELD PROJECT
Growing in the historic center of Los Angeles, the Not Cornfield project transforms an industrial brownfield site into a cornfield for one agricultural cycle. Now the Los Angeles Historic State Park, the site popularly known as 'The Cornfield' had remained derelict for more than a decade. The project serves as a potent metaphor that provides a focus for reflection and action in a city unclear about the location of its energetic and historic center.
ABOUT LAUREN BON, NOT A CORNFIELD ARTIST
Lauren Bon resides in Los Angeles and holds a Masters of Architecture degree from MIT and a BA from Princeton. Ms. Bon is a trustee of the Annenberg Foundation and President of Not A Cornfield, LLC. Her recent urban, public and land art projects in the U.S., Hong Kong, Belfast and Northern Ireland, as well as her role as a trustee, make her uniquely poised to build the capacity of the Foundation in the area of site based philanthropy, serving communities through education, civic, health, artistic initiatives and programs. Not a Cornfield art project is being developed through a grant by the Annenberg Foundation.
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Not A Cornfield’s Sarah McCabe and Jaime Lopez are committed to the exploration and implementation of sustainable living solutions.
Echo Park Film Center is a volunteer-run, non-profit media arts center committed to providing equal and affordable access to film and video education and resources for all members of our diverse and vibrant community via a community microcinema space, free and nominal cost media arts education programs, a comprehensive film equipment and service department, and a touring film festival showcasing local established and student filmmakers. For more info on EPFC programs and services, go to www.echoparkfilmcenter.org
ABOUT FRIDAY NIGHTS @ NOT A CORNFIELD
Friday Nights At Not A Cornfield brings people together in order to share, engage, energize, and enhance the organic nexus that is this project. |
