Media Release: In My Backyard

Growing Food in the City Offers More Benefits Than Just Vegetables

Toronto-based Documentary Filmmaker tackles the Urban Agriculture Movement with her upcoming film In My Backyard.

For Immediate Release

Toronto, September 1st, 2021 

IMBY Poster - 24x36 - FINAL.jpg

Largely due to the COVID-19 Pandemic there has been a surge of people growing food within the city. Whether it is free therapy or increasing self-sufficiency or just because we had more free time, there is no doubt that the interest in growing your own food has increased exponentially. This was seen last year with a run on gardening stores and seed suppliers who had to at points stop orders, unable to keep up with the demand. There was an increase in community garden applications and members in gardening groups. 

Into this arena entered Toronto-based documentary filmmaker Jamie Day Fleck. “I wanted to chronicle the innovative leaders and advocates of the Urban Agriculture movement.” Jamie said, “Starting from my own experience converting my entire Scarborough backyard into a kitchen garden. This film looks out to others who are finding unique ways to grow food within city limits.”

From the backyard gardener to the urban farmer and everything in between Fleck covers the many ways that we can approach Urban Agriculture while dissecting the various benefits to having a strong local food system. She touches on issues such as food insecurity, food inaccessibility and transportation of food as a main driver of greenhouse gas emissions globally. With so many concerned about the climate crisis, Urban Agriculture would help change the society to a more sustainable and equitable one for all.

Offering many diverse methods and solutions, Fleck navigates city spaces introducing the audience to many people who are not stopped by lack of space or time but are heralding in a new relationship of urbanites to their food. Be it on rooftops, in parks, on balconies, or in backyards, the emphasis is on individual actions to bring about social change and how the work we need to do starts right outside our door.

This film will be premiered online on September 12, 2021 followed by a fall schedule of online screenings.

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About FLECK Productions & Jamie Day Fleck
Jamie Day Fleck is an award-winning documentary director and producer. She is graduate of the Masters Program of Documentary Media at Ryerson University and has an undergraduate degree in photography from Parsons The New School of Design in New York City. This is her second feature documentary film. She continues to maintain a large vegetable garden in her backyard in Toronto with the help of her husband and kids. 

Media Contact
Jamie Day Fleck
Director & Producer | FLECK Productions 
www.fleckpro.com
info@fleckpro.com
647-787-6563
Instagram: @fleckproductions
Facebook: @fleckproductions
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