Deborah Koons Garcia Unveils Double-Barreled Call to Action

There’s no shortage of documentary films in recent years that touch down in a remote place to unveil a tragic tale of woeful conditions or something far worse. Many of them have drawn well-deserved critical acclaim.

Those are not the projects Mill Valley filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia seeks.

“For many of them, just because you watched the film doesn’t mean anything has changed,” she said. “I want to make the kind of films that highlight an idea where people say, ‘I think I can do that too.’ They are specifically to model behavior that people can go out and actually do something.”

Koons Garcia, the widow of legendary Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, has focused most of her attention in recent years on the nexus of agriculture and climate change. She’s unveiling two short films at the that sit firmly at that intersection. The films, Portrait of a Winemaker and Transition Town Totnes, screen in the same program of shorts tonight at and again Sat., Oct 15 at the Rafael Film Center.

In Portrait of a Winemaker, Koons Garcia digs deeply into the dry-farming method of John Williams of Frog’s Leap in Napa Valley, allowing Williams to help viewers grasp both the philosophy behind it and how to adopt it themselves.

Soil is central to fixing California’s agriculture problems, Koons Garcia said, noting that 70 percent of the world’s freshwater consumption is directed toward irrigation for agriculture

“How do we focus on soil so we can figure out how we can use less water?” said Koons Garcia, a 34-year resident of Mill Valley. “Under normal rainfall conditions, you can dry-farm in a lot of places in California if your soil can retain that water that has gone into it over the winter.”

Portrait was spawned in part by Koons Garcia’s ongoing work on her next feature film project, Symphony of the Soil. As she pursued a number of angles and storylines for the film, subjects like Williams emerged that deserved much more than a brief segment within a larger film, she said, and she’s dubbed them “Sonatas of the Soil.”

While Portrait delves deeply into the subject of dry-farming, Transition Town Totnes tracks the origins of a movement that has germinated all over the world, including in Mill Valley, in the three years since Koons Garcia filmed Transition Movement founder Rob Hopkins three years ago.

In chronicling Transition’s birth, Koons Garcia said the film also has plenty of how-to elements, including a focus on “re-skilling,” a campaign to educate people on skills reusing greywater, making cheese and planting seeds.

“It’s a process that ultimately down the road is the way out for all of us,” Koons Garcia said. “The questions is what kind of world do we want to be living in here in Marin County in 30 years.”

Giving the audience specific items to act upon as they leave the theater presents a vehicle for change that combats the sense of helplessness or paralysis people often feel after they see a documentary on issues like climate change or farming, Koons Garcia said.

She created a production company called Lily Films 14 years ago, and had her biggest success to date with The Future of Food, a 2004 documentary that highlighted the rampant genetic engineering of food crops.

Koons Garcia said she’s exactly where she wants to be, able to make the films she wants and live in a town she loves. More than 16 years after the death of her husband, people still stop her on the street and tell her how much Jerry Garcia meant to them.

“It’s too bad he’s not here because he was a comforting presence that people came to count on, and people today wish they could count on more things,” she said. “People see him as a talented musician who did a lot of amazing work. It’s really nice they remember that. It always enhances my life.”

The 411: Portrait of a Winemaker and Transition Town Totnes screen as part of the "Our New Frontier: Sustainability" program tonight at 7:30 p.m. at 142 Throckmorton and on Saturday, Oct. 15 at 4:15 p.m. at the Rafael Film Center. Go to the festival’s website for more info and tickets.