Kelowna

Photo: Contributed - http://www.marcarellano.com/spinninggreen/

Marc Arellano ready to ride and shoot

Okanagan College Communications Professor and filmmaker, Marc Arellano, is screening his latest documentary film, Spinning Green March 9 at Western Canada’s biggest documentary film festival, the World Community Film Festival.

He will donate 50% of the profit generated by DVD sales at the screening to the Kelowna Community Food Bank.
Spinning Green is a short documentary film about local SPIN/Urban Farmer Curtis Stone. It tells the story about Stone’s commitment to producing local organic vegetables by bicycle.

“Curtis asked for one condition when I approached him about doing the film,” says Arellano. “He asked that I do the filming by bike, so I ended up riding around 450 km. to complete the production portion.”

The film is about transformation. Stone transforms himself, his family, and his community by planting edible gardens in people’s yards. In exchange for the use of a homeowner’s backyard, Curtis provides monthly produce from his bin program.

It’s an amazing story says Arellano, “He produced 13,000 lbs of food on about 3⁄4 of an acre the season I followed him. I also found myself transformed by the end of filming as my blood pressure went back to normal, I lost weight and no longer showed signs of pre-diabetes.”

Arellano’s film is one of three produced by local educators and filmmakers. Denise Kenney from UBCO and Victor Poirier from CATO were approached by Arellano to work with him in producing locally made documentaries about food security and environmental issues.

Kenney’s short film, Bee Line, “is a proletarian bug song for the honey bee. It riffs on the many personifications of the bee and culminates in a simple look at this insect as an important entity within the miraculously interdependent world we live in.”

“I asked Denise and Vic to collaborate,” says Arellano, “to build a sense of community between our three institutions. As an informal triptych of filmmakers, we can play off each others strengths and bring relevant stories about our community to the Okanagan and beyond.”

While Poirier’s project, Weeds, is still in production and won’t make this festival screening, the three filmmakers hope to screen all three films together in the late fall of 2013.

You can catch Bee Line and Spinning Green March 9th at 4:15 p.m. at the Okanagan College Student Theatre, admission is by donation.

Check Arellano's website for more information.