Background: This scene has really gotten crazy out here right now. [Yelling in background: “no justice, no peace”]

We have not found a larger inner-city garden anywhere in the U.S. The middle of downtown you have 13 acres of people growing food. They posted a notice.

[Farmer: “they want us out of the garden”]

[Protest rally: “sí se puede” “reclamamos justicia”]

[Woman with megaphone: “¿Dónde esta la justicia para nosotros?”]

Stuart Sender: Scott Kennedy, who is the really talented director of the movie, came to us, [god] it what seems like a long time ago—it was, it was 2003. He said there’s this extraordinary place in south-central Los Angeles which is being called the south-central farm. [It is] the largest urban garden in the country and I think there is a story there, because they want to evict the people who have been working on this property, [who have been] turning it into this 14-acre oasis—the largest urban garden in the country. With 500 varieties of trees with organic produce that has been feeding local, mostly immigrant families. We went down and checked this place out and clearly there was an important story, that was an environmental story, that was a story about food and politics, that was a story about real estate, it had kind of echoes of Chinatown—except that instead of it being about water it was about property. We said, “we really need to tell this story, and this a story that is happening in our own backyard.” And that kicked off an adventure of the last few years with Scott and with a really great small group of people to make this film.

Julie Sender: The garden was born in 1992 after the riots in that part of south-central Los Angeles. It had tires and it had all sorts of trash and it was just an eyesore. And sadly that is what it looks like again.

Stuart Sender: Since the end of the film last year, the garden, the property, is sitting vacant. As you’ll see in the film, a lot of things happen without [kind of] proper public hearings. And in this case where they were trying to make this happen without proper environmental impact reports. And now they’re will be a proper environmental impact report. The farmers and their representatives are exploring their legal options to see if it’s possible to get this property back, to turn it back into a farm again, and we’ll see what happens. It’s kind of “stay tuned for the moment.”

Julie Sender: Stuart and I have been calling this “the little move that could,” which isn’t an unusual name for documentaries. There is always a good story about how hard it is to get paid, and how long it takes, and all the twists and turns. The response has been fantastic, obviously there are a lot of people interested in the film—from really great places—universities, and festivals, and probably now we’ll be able to get a theatrical distributor to be a part of the distribution of the film. We’ve long planned for there to be a social campaign built around whatever kind of release the film has for the life of the DVD, because this is about the community, this is about environmental and social justice, and these things are so zeitgeist now and a film like this can be an interesting piece for people to use locally. And in Los Angeles, it’s a local Los Angeles story, even though it has all of these large issues echoed. People will start to take notice of things happening around the city and maybe evaluate differently.

Stuart Sender: I want to add a couple things to that. This is a story that we always saw had universal dimension to it. It takes place in this 14-acre parcel in Los Angeles, but again, it’s is an environmental story, it is a story of community organizing. And this is certainly a moment where we can see that community organizers can have a lot of power—making it all the way to the White House. And this is a story about food politics—because we do really need to look at what we eat and how that effects our energy consumption. So there are a lot of issues that kind of stack up in this movie. And what we’re seeing is this is a story that is really a story that is echoed across the country. It won a film festival here, it’s played from now from Maine to Florida to the West Coast and we see people really get fired up about this movie and I think the Academy nomination is an echo of that. There is something about this film and the people in this film that really has touched a nerve. And there is a moment in the movie that is my favorite—it is when one of the organizers says, “not this time.” Because this is really a story, at heart, about a group of people who don’t often get a voice, who really courageously step out and take their voice and make sure they are heard. The outcome of the story may not be exactly what we want it to be—but the inspiration from that is really powerful. I think that is part of what brought people to the film. I think the other piece that people have really responded to is that everyone is treated with a lot of respect—but also with respect to all of their dimensions. It’s not like there are all good-guys and all bad-guys in this story, we really see how the system works and it’s not very often where a camera shines a light on that over a period of three or four years. I think that is what really impresses people; it shows something we really need to see.

Julie Sender: The only other thing I would add to that is, lightning in a bottle, and timing and things you can never predict, is that all of these issues that this film deals with, including the reevaluation of what value is, and what is value. We’ve now learned that money is not what we thought it was—and what wealth was—and it is a time when emotionally and psychologically, people are reevaluating what value is. And yes, this property was owned by someone, but the way in which it was being used was of the public good and with a greater purpose. I think that is a more recognizable fact now than when we were filming the film. It seems to be getting more and more powerful as time goes on, unfortunately. But, the thing that I also think is important in this film is there was a group of activists born that will never not be activists again. They’re really extraordinary—and many of them are young—many of them may even end up in Los Angeles politics one day. This experience will follow them in terms of how they look at the city in which they may be part of governing—which will be great.