While the local food movement and the popularity of backyard gardens may seem like recent trends, Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s film shows that the urban impulse to work the land has longer, more controversial roots. From the ashes of the Rodney King riots that swept through Los Angeles in 1992 rose a community garden on a fourteen-acre plot of land in the neighborhood of South Central. Though the garden thrived in the hands of residents for nearly a decade, a complex legal process put the land in jeopardy when the original owner moved forward with plans to develop warehouse storage on the site. The Garden follows the struggle of the group “South Central Farmers” as they work through the red tape and empty political promises of Los Angeles City Hall in a desperate attempt to save the center of their community.

Presented as part of the Depth of Field 2010-2011 Series: Spaces and Places

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