March 18: Taking Root, Documentary Showing and Discussion with Director

Film Documentary: Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai
produced and directed by Lisa Merton and Alan Date

As part of Women’s History Month Series – “Everyday Heroines”: Women, Film and Social Movements: Critical Climate Change, Environmental Justice, Food and Land Sovereignty Movements in Africa

When: March 18, 7:30pm, 2010
Where: Humanities 354, University at Albany
What: Film Director, Lisa Merton will join with U Albany Faculty

Co-discussant: Mary Valentis, Professor of English, English Department and co-director, Institute for Critical Climate Change IC3, U Albany

Co-discussant: Deborah LaFond, University Library, Social Sciences Bibliographer, will share resources on “Food Sovereignty Movements in Africa” and some global implications for food. She is currently co-chair of the Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association (ASA), chair of the Africana Librarians Council of ASA.

TAKING ROOT - This film presents an awe-inspiring profile of one woman's thirty-year journey of courage to protect the environment, co-create grassroots movements, ensure equality between men and women, defend human rights, and promote democracy--all sprouting from the achievable act of planting trees. This dramatic narrative shares one woman's personal journey in the context of the turbulent political and environmental history of her country. Internationally known as founder of the Greenbelt Movement (1977) and Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (2004), Wangari Maathai was raised in the rural highlands of Kenya, educated in the United States during the 1960s civil rights era, and was the first female to receive a PhD in East Africa. Maathai discovered the heart of her life's work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. With a simple act Wangari Maathai, a woman born in rural Kenya, started down the path that reclaimed her country’s land from 100 years of deforestation, child malnutrition, and provided new sources of nutritious food and income to rural communities, gave previously impoverished and powerless women a vital political role in their country, became a committed environmentalist and ultimately helped to bring down Kenya's twenty-four-year dictatorship.

Sponsored by: Women’s Studies Department, University at Albany
Co-Sponsors: History Department, United University Professionals (UUP) at the University at Albany