Earth and Women

by Lyndol Michael, Director
A Differentia Production, 2002
VHS, 23 minutes, color
Sales, $150; rental, $40
ISBN 0-7815-0958-0
Contact: The Cinema Guild, New York NY, (212) 685-6242.

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University, University Center MI 48710 USA

mosher@svsu.edu

Earth and Women documents owner-builders with a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) ethic as they build a straw-bale home in the American southwest. These homes are cool in summer, warm in winter and allow concave and curvilinear forms for a personalized dwelling. They make good use of straw, which is often treated as a waste material and burned in the fields.

We meet Jim and Mindy Phillips, whose house we glimpse taking shape between all of the talking heads populating this video. The house rests upon a concrete block foundation, with its door and window framing mostly made of scrap lumber scavenged from the dumpsters of a subdivision going up nearby. Straw bales are then piled atop one another, and this straw construction is then covered with an adobe of mud plaster.

Shay Salomon, builder and homebuilding workshop leader, notes that she leads all-woman workshops most of the time, speculating that women have greater environmental concerns than men. Women speak of empowerment in the process of building a home in a team with other women. One participant comments that her project was a journey "contrary to everything learned in architecture school, everything learned in construction." There is much philosophizing about how this kind of architecture respects the planet and lets people take stewardship, connect with materials in the house, connect with the environment, and reconnect to the earth.

Someone ties the Phillips' choice of home to Mindy's work as a senior caregiver, and the video goes a bit off-track as each woman present explores the care-giving concept. One woman--who must really care--is shown licking her house. "Earth and Women" provokes thought and discussion when shown in a university architecture or architectural history class.