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Numen News |
DVD Sales... Coming soon! We are putting the finishing touches on Numen and will premiere the final version at the International Herb Symposium, at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, June 18th - 21st. We will be receiving our shipment of DVD's during the beginning of July and will start fulfilling orders then. Visit our purchase page to order a copy of Numen. We will be posting updates here as to when Numen will be showing around the country. As sales of Numen begin, please check back to the website and we will be posting updates, tutorials and interview footage not seen in the film. Please send our link to friends and family and get the word out about Numen. Making a chage in the quality of our healthcare begins by putting thought to action! All the best, Terry and Ann NUMEN Premieres in Montpelier, VT ~ March 27th, 2009 With spring in the air, the latest version of NUMEN was enthusiastically received by a sold-out house at the Green Mountain Film Festival. We are energized and excited by the response (a standing ovation!) and deeply moved by the audience’s thoughtful and supportive comments after the film. We couldn’t have asked for a better reception to carry us into the final stages of completing the documentary. The Vision Grows ~ The Product and the Goal The Product: Our vision is to include three informative tutorials, in addition to the documentary, on the final Numen DVD – including:
The Goal ~ 10,000 for $10: Inspired by the grassroots nature of herbal medicine, we need your help to develop a nationwide network of support. Our goal is to inspire 10,000 people to donate $10 each to help us produce and distribute the DVD. Numen isn't just a film about herbal medicine. It is a call to bring sanity back to our healthcare and a reminder that our health is inextricably linked to that of the planet on which we live. And, as herbalist after herbalist we interviewed has said, we can’t be well until the planet is well. What You Can Do:
Contact numen@brookhollow.tv
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“Numen is a magnificent depiction of the healing essence of plants. The filmmakers captured the magic, the mystery, the beauty of plants and their importance as herbal medicine in our contemporary health care system. Inspiring and educational, Numen has a place in the library of anyone interested in medicine, plants, gardening and earth ecology. It’s a powerful film that I’ll recommend that everyone see” ~ Rosemary Gladstar, Herbalist
Numen ~ The Background After returning from graduate research in northeastern Nepal for a doctorate in Social Anthropology, Ann began an apprentice program in herbal medicine with Rosemary Gladstar at Sage Mountain. She was grateful to be home with friends and family, but still deeply missing Nepal and the people she had come to know in Hedangna. She quickly began to find a kind of home in traditional herbalism, in part because it allowed her to continue exploring a way of being in the world that she had experienced in Nepal. And so she immersed herself in getting to know the plants around her home and in experimenting with making teas and tinctures for her infant daughter and herself. As she learned more, however, especially about the business of herbal medicine, she began to see that many of the values that drew her to herbalism risked being lost as plant medicine entered the market place. And so while she had started her studies interested in becoming a community herbalist, she gradually became more interested in bringing the values at the heart of traditional herbalism to a larger audience and in supporting the responsible production and use of plant medicine. While writing about medicinal plant conservation for United Plant Savers, she began to think that film would be a far more effective medium for telling this story because it would allow the herbalists and the plants to speak for themselves. Terry, a filmmaker, was interested as well but film is an expensive medium and so we decided to sit on the idea for several years. The idea kept returning and so finally we decided to sell stock (appropriately Bristol Meyers and Wyeth) inherited from Ann's grandparents, money we had been saving for our children's future, to contribute toward creating the sort of future we hope they will have, and begin the project. We began traveling around the country interviewing herbalists, doctors, healers, and others about their use of and relationship with plant medicine. We gradually raised additional funds, from individual donations (many in lieu of gifts for our wedding) and matching grants ranging from $25 up to $20,000, from herb schools and companies, and from a modest Vermont Arts Council grant. We have each taken on other work to help bring in money as well, which has slowed the project down considerably, and we’ve dipped further into our savings. We are now making one last push to bring in the funds needed to bring this project to completion.
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