Back To The Garden

A documentary film crew returns to interview subjects of a documentary shoot from 1988 in the present day, to see whether they've stuck with their "back to the hills" hippie roots (the subject of the original documentary).

The results are relatively uniform, with all of the featured participants actively pursuing their alternative lifestyle. And while this is pretty inspiring, the film glosses over a number of questions that it raises. These modern day hippies are shown using ruber hoses in farming, a Cat mini-loader, and solar panels, all of which are treated as solutions to industrial activity while ignoring the fact that they can only be obtained as the pinnacle of large-scale industrial activity.

Still, the ideas of simplicity, of being able to work within the system but still move toward the ideal, are all well taken. And it's definitely interesting to see several examples of people who have been in this lifestyle and are still happy and fulfilled twenty years later.