‘This is a really beautiful roach’, says Tequila Ray Snorkel, chief technology officer at the sustainable bug farming operation Ovipost, as she attempts to sell the audience on the charm of cockroaches – in particular, their lovely faces. And, as the film Bug Farm explores, Snorkel isn’t the only one on the small LaBelle, Florida farm who’s developed a fondness for insects that outsiders might find peculiar. A film at the intersection of farm labour, Southern US culture and humanity’s relationship with the insect world, the US director Lydia Cornett’s charming short documentary reveals how, when it comes to the workers dealing with critters most people find gross or pesky, often both, seeing them up close fosters a new appreciation.
Director: Lydia Cornett
Producers: Sean Weiner, Brit Fryer
videoNature and landscape
Scenes from Aboriginal Australian pottery chart the turn of the seasons
7 minutes
videoHistory of science
Insect aesthetics – long viewed as pests, in the 16th century bugs became beautiful
8 minutes
videoLove and friendship
What does it mean to say goodbye to a creature that doesn’t know you’re leaving?
13 minutes
videoThinkers and theories
The prison abolitionist who dares to envision a world without ‘unfreedoms’
16 minutes
videoDemography and migration
In California’s farmlands, immigrant workers share their stories of toil and hope
17 minutes
videoEcology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes
videoHome
Life moves slowly in a Romanian mountain village, shaped by care and the seasons
13 minutes
videoEconomics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes
videoSocial psychology
What happened when a crypto scam swept over a sleepy town in the Caucasus
18 minutes