Forest for the Trees – Earth Day Film Screening

About the Film:

This visually stunning documentary explores the physical and emotional aspects of an outsider community of Canadian west coast tree planters. Deftly weaving together still photographs and film footage, Rita Leistner, an award-winning photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker and erstwhile war photographer and tree planter, depicts the contradictions in the experiences in the lives of the tree planters – the hardship and the healing; the solitude and the joy of belonging — creating an eloquent cinematic metaphor for the human condition.

The film opens with a bird’s eye view of a logging truck barreling out of the forest, loaded with trees. Next, a panoramic shot of desolate terrain reveals a lone figure struggling up the mountainside: a tree planter weighed down on all sides with heavy bags laden with seedlings plunges a shovel into the ground, bends to tenderly nestle the tree into the hole covering it up before moving on to the next. This is done thousands of times a day by tree planters who endure inclement weather, punishing insects, injuries, hunger and crushing fatigue. Alone with their own thoughts, the planters describe how the work has helped them overcome a myriad of personal issues ranging from addiction and mental illness to self-doubt, heartbreak and grief.

Finding common cause, self-knowledge and meaning in their formidable task, this group of diverse individuals discover they can achieve goals they thought were impossible, and restore themselves and each other in the process of restoring the environment.