Half for you and half for me.

[Teebeeaitch]

For those of you who like to ridicule natural beekeeping, have a look at the the review of the Oscar nominated Honeyland documentary. Not a bag of sugar in sight.

 

[Erichalfbee]

For those of you who like to ridicule natural beekeeping, have a look at the the review of the Oscar nominated Honeyland documentary. Not a bag of sugar in sight.

It’s an interesting film for every beekeeper and student of human nature, ridicule or not.

 

[deemann1]

An interesting documentary
A little depressing too

 

[Poly Hive]

And all of this was filmed where exactly? I am pretty sure it wasn't Essex.

When will the penny drop that it's not possible to compare methods that work in warm places with what we can do here? There are things that can be done in Devon that are impossible or at the least very unwise in Caithness.

Then again most of the southerners are blissfully unaware of the climatic differences in the Uk as they toddle off to Provence for the summer, or Italy. Generalising wildly of course....LOL

PH

 

[Erichalfbee]

And all of this was filmed where exactly? I am pretty sure it wasn't Essex.

When will the penny drop that it's not possible to compare methods that work in warm places with what we can do here? There are things that can be done in Devon that are impossible or at the least very unwise in Caithness.

Then again most of the southerners are blissfully unaware of the climatic differences in the Uk as they toddle off to Provence for the summer, or Italy. Generalising wildly of course....LOL

PH

I think this film is a treatise on the human condition rather than on a romantic way to keep bees
Must people will see it as such.

 

[Stiffy]

The film (Honeyland) was filmed in Turkey and is a documentary about a woman subsistence bee farming in an abandoned village in the mountains. A family moves in and disrupts her perilous living. When it all goes wrong the family moves out, the woman is left with no bees etc.
Cracking film, can’t see where anything relates to this country.
S

 

[Poly Hive]

I read the BBC synopsis this afternoon. Did it inspire me to watch it? Not really.

PH

 

[monarda]

I think this film is a treatise on the human condition rather than on a romantic way to keep bees
Must people will see it as such.

A wonderful piece of film making, shame it missed out on the Oscars. Has anyone seen "The Wonders" . This was filmed in Italy and has a beekeeping theme running through it, won at Cannes and is rather good.

 

[Podilia]

It is in youtube now. Interesting film. Bees make honey and honey makes bees - the basic rule of beekeeping. When people replace it with greed they lost everything at the end. This is true of nature. I see how it works here amid farmland where greedy farmers grow only monocultures (soy, corn) year by year, pests and deseas spread as disaster - so use more pesticides, more poison and chemical fertilizers. Really wicked technology of agriculture leads to very bad results.
As for sugar, I didn't have money for sugar this autumn, left them honey. Honey costs almost like sugar here. So I feel like natural

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

For those of you who like to ridicule natural beekeeping,

No, it's 'natural' beekeepers that warrant ridicule.

 

[Firefly]

I finally got around to watching this and really enjoyed it. The way the film immerses you in the (awesome) alien landscape and lifestyle is impressive. It felt so far removed from our crowded, industrialised, commercialised, westernised lives - as if it was the opposite end of the earth - that it came as a real shock to realise she was buying and selling in Euros. The absence of any sense that the presence of a camera and operator were influencing events was astonishing (it's very hard to believe that they were not, but the film conveyed no hint of this, not a sideways glance at the camera, no sense of hesitation or inhibition in people's behaviour)

It's not in Turkey, it's in North Macedonia (the country, not the region of Greece), but all the protagonists were ethnic Turks speaking Turkish. It happened by accident: the film crew were there researching for a nature documentary. First, they came upon the woman who, with her mother, were the sole remaining residents of an abandoned village, so they started filming her life as a beekeeper/honey hunter. Then the itinerant cattle farmers turned up by chance, and the human story unfolded in front of them. They filmed for three years!! Then edited it down to a 90 minute film with a "story", and behind that a parable about human greed, the exploitation of resources, the tragedy of the commons and so forth

Nobody in it is an actor and nothing in it is staged (it seems) - everything filmed really happened, including some quite serious hazards and alarming moments - but I still hesitate to call it a documentary. It is so heavily edited and so packaged into a story arc, that it is the story that draws your attention, rather than the real life: the social and political background, the economic factors that have created what we are looking at. At the end, you are no wiser about any of the reality and context of what is going on than when you started. I felt rather short-changed that the DVD did not include any extras that explored any of this. I'm left with tantalising pictures of a world that I barely understand and would love to know more about, but not much more

It reminds me of a film called The Rider - set in a backwater of the US among an isolated, minority community with an intimate relationship with horses. That also started as a documentary but became a film - but, in that case, the film is much more up front that it is a fiction and that, some of the time at least, people were acting. I think it's a better film for it and, in the end, a more honest film. In that case, the real lives of the protagonists were explored in DVD extras, which were as astonishing as the film itself and deepened my appreciation of the film. If you like this kind of thing, I recommend it (no bees, though)