An Amazing Variety of Seeds Fill the Screen
Seed: The Untold Story
It’s estimated that 94% of our seed varieties have vanished over the last 100 years.
This film features incredibly beautiful scenes of all kinds of seeds from all over the world. It’s filled with colorful characters who almost worship the life giving properties inherent in these small time capsules.
It also provides devastating moments where agriculture has become problematic. There’s a school in Hawaii where students are being poisoned by the agricultural test plots located adjacent to their school. Of course, the evil corporate conglomerate Monsanto also create darkness in their greedy attempts to control the agriculture business around the globe. There’s also a lengthy look at the potential problems of using GMO seeds.
It’s clear the filmmakers are passionate about seeds, about diversity in agriculture and about a healthier way to interact with Mother Earth. Unfortunately, they are a little too passionate. The result is a film that feels disjointed, frenetic, overly long and repetitious. Like seeds blown on the wind, this film skims the surface and hops from place to place while seeming to lose the thread of its narrative. It cries out for a good editor to pull it all together and make it work.
Being vegetarians, Mrs. LanceAround and I are also passionate about the human food supply. As a vegan, NumberTwoSon is even more attune to the subject of vegetative food. We appreciated the effort that went into presenting so many ways of looking at and interacting with the miracle that is life sustaining seeds.
The film was loaded with lots of seed barons. These are people who have created their own seed catalogues, seed banks and/or seed storage unit. They are trying everything they can to keep the purity of seeds for future generations. One of these seed keepers even talks about the difficult choice he’d have to make if his house were on fire. Would he save his wife or get out as many seeds as he could? His wife was not present to give her viewpoint on the matter!
And while the film is not perfect. It did provide many beautiful images, imaginative characters and bits of information that gave us all something to think about.
Lance Around Orlando 
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