In The Botany of Desire, a compelling new documentary from PBS Home Video that's based on Michael Pollan's best-selling book, produced and directed by Michael Schwarz and narrated by Frances McDormand, we learn how nature not only satisfies our desires, but creates new ones. Our very humanity is linked directly with nature, as plants of all kinds provide us with beauty, taste -- and even intoxication. The Botany of Desire will broadcast on PBS on October 28 and will debut on Blu-ray and DVD on November 3.
The Botany of Desire brings Michael Pollan's best-selling book to PBS, showing how human desires are an essential, intricate part of natural history. Explore the natural history of four plants-the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato-and the corresponding human desires-sweetness, beauty, intoxication and controlling nature-that link their destinies to our own.
Filmed all over the world using stunning, high definition photography, this two-hour documentary begins in Michael Pollan's garden, and roams the world, from the potato fields of Idaho and Peru to the apple orchards of New England, from a medical marijuana hot house to the tulip markets of Amsterdam.
One of the great conceits of human civilization is to put ourselves outside nature-sovereign, constantly shaping and re-shaping the wild for our own purposes; people as subjects, and plants as objects. Taking these plants' perspectives of the world restores human activity to its proper place in the matrix of nature
Special DVD features include over 15 minutes of deleted scenes, a 19-minute panel discussion about the interdisciplinary importance of The Botany of Desire and 29 minutes of additional interview footage with Michael Pollan.
To order a copy of The Botany of Desire, call (800) PLAY-PBS or visit shopPBS.org.