The American Chestnut Story (working title) - tells the dramatic epic tale of the tree that built America before vanishing from eastern forests. It is the greatest extinction of a species in our continent’s history. Four billion trees from Maine to Georgie succumbed to blight imported from Asia in 50 years. Now the beloved Chestnut is on the verge of rebirth through a combination of cutting edge science of genetic engineering, ancient agricultural techniques and human grit. The American Chestnut offers a model of hope and adaptability in the age of climate change calamities. (In Production, 2017)
Filmmaker Jake Boritt has just begun work on the project, starting at the The American Chestnut Foundation fall meeting in Louisville, KY. Generously sponsored by the company FutureStake, New York City-based Jake was raised in Gettysburg, PA. Through his film work on land conservation and his project The Gettysburg Story (PBS, 2013) Jake met the owner of FutureStake and they both decided to share the compelling chestnut story further. The American Chestnut Story (working title) is funded and planned as a 15 minute educational and awareness-raising film. We hope that the richness of the American chestnut story will ultimately be told in a full length documentary ready for national broadcast. Jake will be producing the film throughout 2017. To all of you with rich chestnut background and collections, Jake could use the following: 1) historical images of chestnut trees, snags and structures; 2) locations of dramatic looking American chestnut survivor trees, snags, stumps; and 3) any older folks who grew up with chestnut and are willing to speak about their memories of the trees and the onset of the blight. You can reach filmmaker Jake Boritt via email Chestnut(AT)boritt.com, website www.GettysburgStory.com/chestnut or 717-500-1863. I look forward to sharing production updates with all of you and thanks to those of you willing to participate in the project.
To see a short, rough preview of the project please email us for the password. It is currently not available for public viewing.
https://vimeo.com/215942691
Story Treatment:
Life:
For thousands of years the American Chestnut is the dominant tree in eastern North America. Over four billion Chestnut trees make-up a quarter of the forest. Abundant and massive, the trees live for centuries, growing over 100 feet high and 10 feet wide. Native tribes revere the tree. A young United States is literally built with Chestnut, allowing a people to manifest their own destiny. From Georgia to Maine, Chestnut trees provide reliable, plentiful food for wildlife, livestock and humans. It is the perfect timber for homes, farms and industry. Chestnut is a keystone species on which all other life depends. But as America blossoms the tree from which it was built is attacked by a foreign invader.
Death:
In 1904 a forester discovers an odd fungus on Chestnut trees in New York City’s Bronx Zoo. This mysterious blight has never been seen by scientists in America before. The giant trees die quickly. Desperate for answers, an explorer ventures deep into the mountains of China. Here he finds the same blight infecting the gnarled limbs of resistant Asian Chestnut trees. The Chestnut blight had been transported to New York on Asian nursery stock. Massive government and private efforts to stop the killer prove futile. America’s towering trees are helpless. The Chestnut blight spreads rapidly, devastating the forests of the Mid-Atlantic and New England. By the 1930s the blight reaches the abundant Chestnut forests of southern Appalachia. In the midst of the Great Depression, communities lose the life-giving trees. These rugged individualistic mountain people are devastated, forced from the forests into the mines to survive. Ridges once full with mighty Chestnut forests turn into graveyards of grey ghostly skeletal snags. After constant failure, efforts to save the tree are halted. Four billion trees are functionally extinct. All that remains are massive rotting stumps sending up young sprouts - doomed to die by blight.
Rebirth:
In the 1980s an elderly professor of plant genetics, a leader in the green revolution nearing the end of his career, becomes intrigued by the American Chestnut. He teams with a young PhD candidate turned tree farmer. They spend years digesting all available scientific literature on the failed efforts to save the American Chestnut. They determine the tree can be reborn. Together they begin adapting the latest genetic science for a long, tedious breeding program to bring back the tree. In the decades that follow others join to build a fellowship infused with equal parts scientific acumen and religious fervor. Together they strive to save the tree and return it to the American forest. Scientists begin experimenting with genetic engineering to create a blight-resistant Chestnut. Today the beloved Chestnut is on the verge of rebirth through a combination of cutting edge science, ancient agricultural techniques, grit, and passion. Orchards of blight resistant Chestnut trees now dot the Appalachian foothills. It will be the first time in human history an extinct species is returned to the wild. In our age of failing forests and climate change calamities the American Chestnut offers a model of adaptability and hope.