Farmer's doc reaps event's first standing ovation

CHAMPAIGN – The first standing ovation of the 10th annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival greeted the close-to-home documentary, "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," on Friday evening.

The seventh film of the 13-film festival is about Farmer John Peterson, a quirky farmer who turned his longtime family farm in northern Illinois into a hippie/artist commune before losing it.

In an effort to redeem himself, Peterson went organic in the early '90s, turning the Peterson farm into Angelic Organics, a community-supported agriculture farm, or CSA, that now feeds 6,000 members weekly, many of them in Chicago.

Peterson and director Taggart Siegel, who first visited and began to film Peterson 27 years ago, were at the Virginia Theatre, with Peterson having traveled here from New Zealand.

He and Siegel have been screening the film in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, usually to sold-out houses.

"This has been the most emotional screening I've ever been part of," Siegel said of the Virginia. "This is a beautiful audience."

The young filmmaker said that his meeting Peterson after being invited to his farm as a student at Beloit College, Peterson's alma mater, was a destiny moment.

Siegel began filming him then, later incorporating into the documentary family film shot by Peterson's mother, Anna, a farmer's wife and teacher who had bought a Super-8 movie camera in the 1950s. Peterson's relationship with his mother, who died of lung cancer while the movie was being made, is one of the most moving elements of the documentary.

Siegel also took footage of the auction in which the Peterson farm and farm equipment was sold. The Peterson land had once covered 350 acres and was down to 22 by the time Peterson was $500,000 in debt.

With a consumer camera in hand, Siegel also followed Peterson to Mexico and Guatemala at least three times when Peterson was despondent about having lost the farm and seemed to be on a personal quest.

"When I was out in the world more and more, I noticed this yearning to return to the farm," Peterson said after the screening.

Siegel shot more than 150 hours of footage for "The Real Dirt on Farmer John," which was written and narrated by Peterson.

"I only thought it was worth doing if it was a story worth telling," the farmer said. "I knew it would test our friendship and slow down our farming. Taggart and I both marveled that this farm came back to life."

Peterson said the documentary carries a larger message.

"Everything was lost, smashed, hopeless, an impossible dream when I said I would never farm again," he said. "To have a dream so ruined. It seemed hopeless, but we brought it back. It's a message for people who feel hopeless, and in a larger sense, it's a message for what can happen to the world in a larger way."

He said his farm and community-supported agriculture in general brings people together and can lead to cultural transformation. He said the industrialization and the "chemicalization" of agriculture have affected the water we drink and the air we breathe.

"If people join (CSAs), we would have a more healthy agricultural system," he said.

He asked the people in the Virginia Theatre audience how many already belong to a CSA – more than a dozen on the main floor alone raised their hands. He then asked how many people would be interested in joining a CSA; The majority of people raised their hands.

He noted that in the United States 20 years ago, there was not one CSA farm. Now there are more than 2,000, more than in any other country, feeding about 750,000 people.

"We have a ways to go," Peterson said, adding that screenings of "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" might just help build the movement.

"The Real Dirt on Farmer John" played to a packed theater. The screening had been sold out, but all 63 people who waited in line to buy tickets got in.

"The Real Dirt on Farmer John" was followed Friday night by "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters," an unconventional biopic about Japanese author Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), directed by Paul Schrader, who was scheduled to appear onstage after the screening.

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