Green Valley (July 8, 2026)

qathet film society Festival Worthy Films presents:

GREEN VALLEY - Wed July 8, 7pm (Unrated, 1hr 23 minutes)

*Zoom Q&A with director Morgan Tams following the film*

Filmed over the course of two years, entirely off-the-grid by long-time farm resident Morgan Tams, Green Valley is an intimate and authentic portrait of a community on the fringes - told by one of their own.

Amidst towering trees, mist dappled fields and dozens of rusted old pickup trucks, 65 year-old Henry Verschuur has carved out a kingdom. On Cortes Island off Canada’s West Coast, three ferries from the mainland, and three kilometres down a rough dirt driveway sits Blue Jay Lake Farm: a ramshackle rural haven unlike anywhere else in the world. Over the last ten years, the reclusive farmer has opened his remote property up to a burgeoning generation of young do-it-yourself homesteaders who have chosen a rustic, off-grid existence in response to the pressing global problems of over- consumption, disconnection, and waste. Living off-the-grid and off-of-the-land, growing all their own food, and re-purposing society’s castoffs for their own weird and wonderful uses, this colourful gang of outcasts have carved out a community from a once desolate clear-cut.

At a time when audiences are questioning how 20th century “progress” has failed our environment and society, this tender and bracingly honest film offers a glimpse of a possible alternative - without offering any easy answers. At times humorous, enlightening and heartbreaking, Green Valley is a timely exploration of the ingenuity, sacrifice and sheer beauty that emerges from working together towards a simpler existence in these complex times.

"A thoughtful, tender ode to the beauty and the reality of 'going back to the land' that makes you think about our impact on the earth and our relationship to all that sustains us…. a very strong film with peace and ethics and an underlying hopefulness about our ability to adapt our way of life to something else - which is deeply needed at this time…. a profound accomplishment.” Lisa Jackson, Filmmaker

Green Valley is like looking through a family photo album. We follow the daily chores of the farmers as they move from season to season, harvest to harvest. The viewer feels cradled within the lonely wildness of the Pacific Northwest. It’s a profoundly beautiful land, and it exudes a quietly formidable power. And while the film is directed by one of the community’s own members—thereby offering an insider’s rather than an objective view—it feels like a naked portrayal of their stories. The farm’s gifts are abundant—one participant even produces her own varieties of cheese—and Tams’ film very artfully conjures the sense of a labyrinthine complex of barns and huts and workshops and scavenged technology in a continuous cycle of reclamation by nature.

Morgan Tams is clearly celebrating the communal bonds that sustain this group of people. A big part of the ideal is that this is a multi-generational farm, with elders benefitting from having younger people and wee children among them. If there’s a running theme, it comes with the inevitable cycle of life: along with some animals being put down, we meet an elder of the group, Henry, who is grappling with prostate cancer. He knows he won’t be around forever and there are blunt conversations about mortality.