Friday Nights @ Not A Cornfield

‘What Comes Next?’ Discussion Series: Healing Gardens
+
Film Screening: The Shaman’s Apprentice

Friday, January 6, 2006 @ 7:30pm

This is the first in a planned series of discussions and presentations about issues that relate to the follow-up of the Not A Cornfield project on the grounds of the Los Angeles State Historic Park in downtown Los Angeles.

Not A Cornfield
South gate:
1201 N. Spring St.
North gate:
1799 Baker St.
(323) 226-1158

– All events and activities are FREE.
– Handicapped Accessible
– Refreshments served during special events

This first discussion is an invitation to discuss healing gardens. An end goal is to define what to plant in the spiral “Eye” near the southern end of the 32-acre site.

Anyone interested in influencing this dialog is welcome to attend and encouraged to participate in the evening’s discussion. To expand the brainstorming, Echo Park Film Center will bes hoing the film, “The Shaman’s Apprentice.”

NOTE
Friday Nights@Not A Cornfield programs are held rain or shine in the heated and covered Yurt, near the Not A Cornfield North Gate entrance. These events are free of charge and open to the public.

FILM PROGRAM
The Shaman’s Apprentice (Miranda Smith, 2001, 54 minutes)
Curated by Sarah McCabe and Jaime Lopez in association with Echo Park Film Center.

ABOUT THE FILM
The Shaman’s Apprentice, an award-winning documentary directed by Miranda Smith with narration by Susan Sarandon, examines Ethonobotanist Mark Plotkin’s quest to preserve the ancient wisdom of Amazonian shamans.

‚ÄúFor more than twenty years Dr. Mark Plotkin has searched the Amazon for plants that heal. He is an ethnobotanist, a scientist who studies the relationship between indigenous people and plants. He set out on a mission to find a cure for diabetes, a disease that killed both of his grandmothers. The Shaman‚Äôs Apprentice charts the story of Mark’s discoveries, and looks at the astonishing ability of native people to manage their environment.

People of the forest have become sophisticated chemists by necessity, utilizing plants for every aspect of their lives. Often, the entire knowledge of a tribe resides in the mind of the shaman – the tribe’s doctor and spiritual leader. But the shamans are also the most endangered species in the Amazon. Marooned in time by the loss of traditional ways, many of the native healers have no apprentices. Most are old, and each shaman’s death is a kind of extinction. It is these shamans that Mark seeks out, hoping to save their precious knowledge, for it may be vital to the world’s future.

The Shaman‚Äôs Apprentice is a story of survival against the odds. It interweaves the luminous rain forest world of phenomena and legends with western science and the grim realities of extinction. In the story of one man’s quest to preserve the ancient wisdom of our species, we find intelligence, cooperation and hope that could save one of the most glorious places on Earth. ‚Äú
–Text from Bullfrog Films