Ciclovida: Lifecycle

CHICOPEE, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - It's a film produced by locals filmmakers that pedals alongside farmers from Brazil who bicycle over 6,000 miles across the South American continent in search of natural seeds - and it is making it's east coast debut tomorrow at the Academy of Music. Loren Feinstein, one of the filmmakers tells you more about it.

The film is Lifecycle, it follows two landless workers, small farmers from north eastern Brazil that can't find natural reproducing seeds in their area because of agri-business coming in and with the governments, they systematically eliminated natural reproducing seeds. They were stuck having to grow a cash crop to buy seeds. Stuck in this sort of endentured servitude. They wanted to break out of that. So, they started looking for natural seeds. They couldn't find any. They started bicycling up to 300 miles radius and they decided to make a bigger trip of it and went to Argentina and back. It is over 6,000 miles on the bikes that they built themselves. To gather and bring back natural reproducing seeds so that they can grow their own food and save the seeds and grow it again the next year and then they can pour their time and energy into  making their life better.

We see that the changes are happening currently in the global south in Brazil and in this case, that happened here in our country around the end of World War II. People are pushed systematically out of the rural areas and into the urban areas. This causes the big slums we see, those that are famous in a lot of films these days and you see these big slums on the outside of the cities. What happens is, these people want to get back in to the country and improve their lives by growing their own crops. That is happening right now. This resistance is a functional resistance that is really working in the face of the big global businesses that even governments can't control.

I learned so much by being down there. It was a real challenge to do what they did. Because they are incredible people. They really got outside of the comfort zone and pushed themselves. They left with under $100 in their pocket and went on the year long journey with no support crew and no plans other than that they were going to meet people along the way, visit ecological schools and seek seed and bring back these natural seeds so that they can grow them in their region and distribute them to other farmers and other small farming communities in their area.

They tried to keep this down in a lot of ways because they don't want to lose the control that they have gained and are continually trying to gain in the country side, consolidating land into larger and larger portions that can be farmed by these industrial methods driving tractors over acres and acres with fossil fuels in the process.

It is actually a different sort of distribution down there. People want to hear about it. They know about the problems and want more information. Here it is more of an education thing. It is turning people on to what is going on.

We hope that there are two messages. One is that we hope they go to Brazil and in the south in particular and see what global agri-business is doing.

The other is to what is done with the other resources you have. In this case, very, very few resources other than their courage and strong philosophy and their willingness to go on this big journey that you can enact that change at home. Locally. In your area.

The show tomorrow at Academy of Music. 8 o'clock p.m. Doors open at 7:15 in Northampton. This is the debut on the east coast. It is a really big deal. Everyone is invited to attend.

For more information visit Ciclovida.org