Documentary in Post Production!
After a year of dreaming and planning and dreaming some more, the time has come to bring our ;attest big, hairy, audacious goal to life. Forest Hymn for Little Girls shouts across the globe - girls need wild spaces - or will with your help! Following girls under the age of six, this documentary will influence the course of young girls' home and school experiences by challenging the adults who guide them to make space for risk-taking, rolling in mud, hunting mysteries in the woodland, and nurturing their inner-scientist. And director Sara Bonaventura has finished her final filming session. Now it's time for animation, music, and editing.
Forest Hymn for Little Girls is the first documentary to provide an in-depth consideration of young girls’ experiences in wild spaces from their own perspective and in their own voice. On the heels of Pokemon GO, Richard Louv’s campaign for family nature clubs, and the National Park Service Centennial, all aimed to get American families off the couch and exploring the great outdoors, a film from Raintree School aims to place young girls at the center of the children and nature movement. Forest Hymn for Little Girls, a feature-length documentary from an all-female international team, will amplify the conversation. It asks the question, who has the right to access wild lands?
Launched on Kickstarter, November 2016, the film surpassed its funding and is proud to be a community funding film with backers from St. Louis to Finland.
Hailing from Missouri, the film offers a relevant and timely call to reexamine the rights of little girls as citizens and members of our natural landscapes. As enrollment in Girl Scouts across the country dwindles, Forest Hymn for Little Girls reflects on the role forests as playgrounds play in the development of young girls’ lives.
From award-winning, Italy-based videographer Sara Bonaventura and featuring an international collaboration of animators, illustrators and composers (USA, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Czech Republic, Finland, Poland, and Lithuania), the film pulls from creative women around the globe to showcase the narratives of young girls, under the age of 6, during a year spent discovering the woodland.
Stay tuned as the children of Raintree show how transformative a life connected to wildlands can be as Forest Hymn for Little Girls challenges audiences to encourage little girls to take off their tutus and tug on their hiking boots – our wild landscapes need preserving and our girls need time to get outside, climb trees, and chase toads in the mud.
Check out the teaser here.