Sundance

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 12, 2016) — LOOK AND SEE: A Portrait of Wendell Berry (previously titled THE SEER), directed by Independent Spirit Award-winning filmmaker Laura Dunn (THE UNFORESEEN), will screen in the Spotlight section at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival as part of the The New Climate program, following its award-winning premiere at SXSW earlier this year. The Sundance Film Festival takes place January 19-29 with screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City and at Sundance Mountain Resort, Utah. The Sundance Film Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, The End of the Tour, Little Miss Sunshine, Reservoir Dogs, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious and Napoleon Dynamite.

LOOK AND SEE is a cinematic portrait of the changing landscapes and shifting values of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture, as seen through the mind’s eye of writer, farmer, and activist Wendell Berry.

The first documentary about Berry, undoubtedly one of America’s most significant living writers (see “About Wendell Berry” below), LOOK AND SEE was filmed in and around the rolling hills of Henry County, Kentucky – where Berry has lived and farmed since the mid-1960’s. Filmmaker Laura Dunn skillfully weaves Berry’s poetic and prescient words with gorgeous cinematography and the testimonies of his family and neighbors, all of whom are being deeply affected by the industrial and economic changes to their agrarian way of life.

Often called “a prophet for rural America,” Berry has long been a voice for the communities that are so often overlooked by the media. LOOK AND SEE subverts biopic conventions and immerses audiences into Berry’s world, providing a space to talk about the land and those who live on it.

It’s a conversation that is more urgent than ever, as we find ourselves in a deeply divided nation where so many Americans are disconnected from the farmers who feed them.

Robert Redford, Terrence Malick, and Nick Offerman served as producers on LOOK AND SEE, which, following its award-winning March 2016 premiere at the SXSW Film Festival, was retitled and updated to reflect the conversations that have emerged since the election.

Dunn was awarded the IFC “Truer than Fiction” Independent Spirit Award for her previous film, THE UNFORESEEN, which was also executive produced by Redford and Malick. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and was broadcast on the Sundance Channel.

For more information about LOOK AND SEE, visit www.lookandseefilm.com.

ABOUT WENDELL BERRY
Wendell Berry is the author of more than 40 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, including the seminal The Unsettling of America. His countless awards include the National Humanities Medal, the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, the Roosevelt Institute's Freedom Medal and the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2015 became the first living writer named to the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.