Garbage Warrior
Oliver Hodge / UK (England) / 2007 / 86 min
The film is about Michael Reynolds, an architect in New Mexico. Well, almost! Whilst the film starts like a typical character study of this environmental rebel, it later on broadens out to include a little bit more about the “earthship”, his invention of self-sustainable housing. Amazingly, the visionary takes on planning authorities, lawyers, senate, extreme climates, the architects association, funding crisises, and emergency housing tasks after earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. Impressing with his hard physical and clever intellectual work, his passion, enthusiasm and humanity, he founded not only several earthship communes in the desert and mountains of New Mexico, but also builds prototypes all over the world, such as in Honduras, Bolivia, France and even Brighton, where he met the film maker Oliver Hodge on a UK test site.
And whilst the documentary is beautifully filmed, it seems to focus at the start too much on one man; whereas his whole collective is digging, stamping and building away with and in the recycled rubbish material. The film is inspiring the audience to not just go and see an earthship, but to practically do; to build one and live in it as well. So it’s quite a powerful piece then.
rating 4/5
More info: http://www.earthship.net/
Comments
Comment by Green Nicaragua Real Estate on 2008-02-15 23:18:56 +0100
Earthships come to Nicaragua. We’ve just been working with Mike Reynolds here in Nicaragua on the first Earthship in the country. We are keeping a day to day construction blog. We’re currently on Day 26 of what we hope will be the start of a green movement in nicaragua real estate. The project is being run hand in hand with the local community of Carizal just south of the fishing town of San Juan del Sur on Nicaragua’s pacific coast. We are planning some tours later this year – hand in hand with the team from Earthship Biotecture and the local communinty – where people can get involved with building an Earthship here in Nicaragua.