TAKING ROOT is the story of the growth of a woman and the grassroots movement she founded, the Green Belt Movement of Kenya. Together they have transformed their country and our understanding of the integral connections of sustainable development, ecological diversity, human rights, and democracy.

Planting trees for fuel and food is not something that anyone imagined as the first step toward the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet with that simple act, Wangari Maathai started down the path that led her to organize rural Kenyan women in a tree-planting project that reclaimed their land from 100 years of deforestation, restored indigenous agriculture, provided new sources of income, and gave these previously impoverished and powerless women a vital role in their country. They became Kenya's Green Belt Movement: their small organization found itself working successively against ignorance, against prejudice, against embedded economic interests, and political oppression, until they became a national force and in the face of violent government reaction helped to bring down Kenya's dictatorship. The Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 recognized Maathai for her 30-year struggle "to protect the environment, promote democracy, defend human rights, and ensure equality between men and women." In so doing, it also presented to the world a model of personal courage in her determination to follow the links from poverty to development, climate, economics, and democracy.

TAKING ROOT presents Kenya's future in action with the hope that Wangari Maathai's belief in the vital link between the health of the land, its people and its government will move beyond Kenya throughout Africa and the world.

Production Credits:

PRODUCED and DIRECTED by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater.

EDITOR Mary Lampson co-edited the academy-award winning documentary HARLAN COUNTY, USA. She has worked with Emile de Antonio, Ricky Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker. She produced and directed UNTIL SHE TALKS, an award-winning short film that aired on PBS's American Playhouse. She has produced over 25 short live action films for Sesame Street. Most recently, she worked with Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert on A LION IN THE HOUSE, which screened at Sundance in 2006, won a special Jury Citation at Full Frame and the Audience Award at Hot Docs. She edited Anne Makepeace's new film, RAIN IN A DRY LAND.

COMPOSER/MUSICIAN Samité Mulondo, originally a native of Uganda, fled Idi Amin's dictatorship in 1982 and ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya. After leaving the refugee camp Samité had musical success in Kenya both with the African Heritage Band and as a solo act. He immigrated to the US in 1987 and thanks to an opening in an early Lady Smith Black Mambazo tour, he began building a reputation as a traditional African musician. In his music he is influenced by traditional African music, jazz, and classical. Samité is composing an original score for TAKING ROOT.