“Do you want to save the world, or do you want to go down? Do you want to save the world or do you want to go down?” That is the question repeated at the beginning of the trailer for the documentary Peter and the Farm, spoken by the titular farmer as an oozing, disparaging guitar riff sets up a feeling of paranoia.
Featuring some beautifully lensed frames — along with some glowing reviews — the trailer follows its enigmatic figure at its center while he tends to his land and pontificates upon nature and the way the world works. As he bluntly puts it, “without enough animals, meaning is all f*cked up.” Whether one agrees or not, it is hard to argue with his sentiment that he cares more about his farm than himself.
See the trailer below, along with a ND/NF talk with the director and poster.
Peter Dunning is the proud proprietor of Mile Hill Farm, which sits on 187 acres in Vermont. The land’s 38 harvests have seen the arrivals and departures of three wives and four children, leaving Peter with only animals and memories. The arrival of a film crew causes him to confront his history and his legacy, passing along hard-won agricultural wisdom even as he doubts the meaning of the work he is fated to perform until death. Haunted by alcoholism and regret, Peter veers between elation and despair, often suggesting to the filmmakers his own suicide as a narrative device. He is a tragedian on a stage it has taken him most of his life to build, and which now threatens to collapse from under him. At once a postcard from paradise and a cautionary tale for our times, Peter and the Farm sifts through the potential energy of a human life, that which is used and that which is squandered.
Peter and the Farm opens November 4th in select theaters and VD.