The subject of Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s second documentary, The Garden, has all the elements of a juicy story: righteous class struggle; feckless, if not crooked, politicians; the changeable and uncertain application of the law by various courts; capitalism as the 
universal nurturer of self-interest, and even the occasional celebrity cameo. Thankfully, Kennedy has leveraged all of these assets, and more, to construct an engaging film about the inspiring, sad, and even slightly bloody struggle over a certain 14 acres block in South Central L.A. It is a story which, I suspect, many people (like me) will have known nothing about. More importantly, it is an important story, one which portrays the local race, class, and economic politics of Los Angeles while reflecting a host of larger, more universal conflicts.
For some 10 years prior to the eviction notice which essentially marks the beginning of the film, a group of some 350 families have been farming individual plots within a large, beautiful community garden close enough to downtown Los Angeles for it to be photographed throughout the film in low aerials against the backdrop of L.A.’s smoggy skyscrapers. The garden was conceived as a post-Rodney-King-riot measure to heal the South Central community, but now, it seems, the private owner of the land wants it back. But is it his land? And if so, how did he get it? Is the city councilwoman from the district supporting her constituency or making secret deals? Did a well-know community organizer line her and her son’s pockets with the money raised for a project competing for the use of the land? Is this a struggle between, as one farmer put it, the brown and the black contingent of the community? Are the farmers using the land as it was intended (for individual family sustenance) or as a source of profit?
All of these questions, and whatever answers can be gleaned, make The Garden’s 80 minutes fly by. And while I admire Kennedy’s soft touch (several of the central characters, and the story’s built-in potential to incite indignation, need no filmmaker-manipulation), I would have liked a few of the subjects to have been treated a bit more thoroughly. That is the organic, and therefore flawed, nature of any documentary, however, and there isn’t much more that Kennedy could have done to allow this political and cultural fiasco to leave an indelible impression on the audience. Although Kennedy didn’t stand a chance to win the most recent Oscar over the spectacle that was Man on Wire, his is a very deserving film, which anyone drawn to the imperfections of humanity is bound to both enjoy and find moving.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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