The Next Harvest

Normal Life Pictures has begun production on THE NEXT HARVEST, an hour-long documentary which dissects the global food system, and explores solutions to the coming crisis as they play out on the banks of the Niger River. The film is being produced in partnership with STEPS International, part of the Why Poverty? series, and will air all over the world in 2012. Directed by Hugo Berkeley and Osvalde Lewat.

The Dull Knifes

Guy Dull Knife Jr., a Vietnam veteran, artist, single father, and modern-day Lakota leader, invokes his family legacy to help raise his 13 children on the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of America’s poorest communities.

The Market Maker

Eleni Gabre-Madhin is a woman with a dream. The charismatic Ethiopian economist wants to end hunger in her famine-plagued country. But rather than relying on foreign aid or new agricultural technology, she has a truly radical plan. She has designed the nation’s first commodities exchange, which she hopes will revolutionize an ancient market system whose inefficiencies have been partly responsible for the country’s persistent food shortages.

Gabriel Von Wayditch Project

The story of greatest composer you’ve never heard of. Gabriel Von Wayditch was born in Hungary and emigrated to America in 1911 when he was 17. He spent more of his life hand-writing music in a shack in Queens, New York, and his body of work is larger than any other 20th Century composer. He wrote 8 grand operas and holds the World Record for the longest opera, “Horus”. But during his lifetime, he only ever heard one of his works performed.

A Normal Life

An emotionally-charged and inspiring documentary from directors Chai Vasarhelyi and Hugo Berkeley, the film follows seven young friends over three years after the war in Kosovo.

Best Documentary, Tribeca Film Festival 2003