Truck Farm

Painfully hip but also good-natured, director Ian Cheney's (King Corn) latest documentary looks at funky ways to practice back-to-the-land hippie agrarianism in a big, organically unfriendly city. Brooklynite Cheney focuses specifically on his recession-fighting quest to grow leafy veggies in the back of his old pickup truck. Instead of employing the usual dry voiceover narrative, Cheney opts for a self-consciously silly acoustic folk soundtrack with Sesame Street–style lyrics playfully and continually commenting on the unfolding urban-gardening process, interspersed with crude but effective cartoon segments. From a purely gardening standpoint, Cheney receives good horticultural advice and is soon nurturing a modest harvest of garnish-type edibles (he even has a physicist devise a solar-powered camera to mount in the vehicle's back window so it can record the stages of plant growth). Cheney's enterprise witnesses its share of setbacks, including having lavender stolen from the truck bed during the night. Cheney also looks at other similar alterna-farming in the area—such as a collective in the Red Hook neighborhood raising crops on an unused baseball field, as well as a barge that is being turned into a floating garden. Offering an interesting look at the world of DIY urban-guerilla gardening, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Sandlin)