Brittany Shyne's powerful documentary, Seeds, offers a profound and intimate portrait of Black farmers in the American South, filmed over the remarkable span of seven years. This visually arresting film, shot entirely in black-and-white, delves into the beauty, hardship, and deep political significance of working the land for a community fighting to maintain a vanishing way of life.
The Poetic and Political Landscape
The film's cinematography transforms agricultural rituals into scenes of stunning visual poetry. Viewers witness the stark contrast of giant machines harvesting cotton, with white fluffs filling the air like snow. This imagery is loaded with history, as the choreography of farm work in the South is inextricably linked to the painful legacy of slavery. For the farmers featured, owning land is not merely an economic asset; it represents hard-won autonomy, a direct connection to labour, and the crucial preservation of heritage for future generations.
Systemic Barriers and Financial Precarity
Despite their relentless work ethic, the documentary starkly reveals how systemic discrimination continues to threaten the farmers' existence. While their white neighbours readily access federal support programmes, Black farmers face a labyrinth of near-insurmountable bureaucratic red tape, resulting in critically long delays for vital funding. This institutional neglect, combined with soaring operational costs and taxes, has led to many losing their land altogether.
One of the film's most poignant moments follows 89-year-old Carlie Williams, a farmer since his teenage years, as he struggles to afford a simple pair of prescription glasses. The film's focus on an older generation underscores a worrying implication: with such profound instability, this vital line of work appears increasingly unviable for younger people, risking the erosion of centuries of agricultural knowledge.
Resilience and the Cycle of Hope
Yet, Seeds is far from a simple elegy. It powerfully captures the community's resilient spirit as they organise and march to Washington to protest the inadequacies of the Biden administration's support. Mirroring the natural cycle of cultivation it portrays, Shyne's film structures itself around the seasons of life, framing its narrative with a funeral at one end and the limitless open sky at the other. This artistic choice imbues the struggle with a dose of melancholy but leaves room for hope—the enduring hope for a better harvest in the future.
Seeds will be showing at Bertha DocHouse in London from 23 January.
