This short documentary profiles a community engaged in developing sustainable living methods, including food production and small-scale solar and wind technology, on a farm in Massachusetts in the 1970s. Well before sustainability was a mainstream concern, these prescient innovators attempted to create a vision of a greener, kinder world. "Think small," say the New Alchemists. "Look what thinking big has done."
From a quiet, neglected corner of Nova Scotia, a meeting with the Black community that shows both the traditional attitudes of the older generation and the more alert, resolved stance of the young. The old still pin their hopes on the church and the preacher, while the young look more towards the Black United Front and its roving director. For both generations change is a challenge. The common hope is for a fuller life.
The human side of town planning, as exemplified in Baltimore, Maryland. The Coldspring Project concerned a proposed housing development for lower and upper income levels on a three hundred-acre site adjoining a wildlife sanctuary. The film records the differences aired in meetings of various interest groups that tried to modify the plan according to their views, and the compromise reached, based on plans drawn up by Montréal architect Moshe Safdie.
