Viewing and discussion of documentary film: 'Arribes: Everything Else is Noise'

Introduced by the director, Zev Robinson

Arribes is an isolated region in NW Spain bordering Portugal where people produce 80-90% of their own food.

As people reflect on never owning a car or tractor, walking from village to village to go to communal dances, tending goats and sheep at an early age, and killing the animals that they had fondly raised, a picture of a eco-system emerges where everything is used, recycled, and interconnected. Producing 80-90% of their own food, there has always been a strong, direct relationship between food, agriculture, and the people who tend the land, making it a concrete example of a sustainable environment with lessons that can be applied elsewhere.

With the depopulation of the countryside, the erosion of this way of life is contrasted with the views of a younger generation who moved there from Madrid, Barcelona and the UK, attracted by what Arribes had to offer.

The sometimes funny, sometimes sad anecdotes are accompanied by details of everyday countryside life depicted with a sense of poetry and care, bringing into focus values often forgotten in a contemporary society with other pr

Organiser: Dr. Jakob Klein