A pair of the Bluegrass State’s independent movie houses – Maiden Alley Cinema in Paducah and The Kentucky Theatre in Lexington – will screen a series of short films this week that gives viewers a glimpse into the mind and world of Kentucky writer Wendell Berry.
Collectively called “Look and See: Further,” the films were created from nearly 100 hours of unused footage originally shot for a 2016 documentary called “Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry.”
Berry – a widely celebrated author, environmental activist and native farmer to the Henry County town of Port Royal – has written more than 50 pieces of poetry, essays, and fiction focusing on themes like strong local communities, ecologies and the importance of agriculture in society.
Laura Dunn created both the original documentary and the new collection of shorts. She said this new iteration of the project was inspired by Berry’s agrarian values.
“There's a lot of great material that gets left on the cutting room floor. So I had this idea that sort of, in the agrarian ethos of let nothing go to waste, I would take all those quote-unquote scraps, which really are gems, and cut together a series of short films that just expanded thematically on different things we touched on in our conversations,” Dunn said.
“Look and See: Further” consists of nine short films which total around 90 minutes in runtime. Dunn said the shorts capture Berry speaking on topics such as human nature and the history of farming in his hometown, as well as readings of his poetic works
Dunn said she hopes the screenings will help connect people with the author’s writings, which she thinks are more relevant than ever.
“His work is highly resonant with just values of meaning and community and relationship to each other in the land. And you know, those are hard to come by in our rapidly accelerating industrial world,” said Dunn.
Dunn’s shorts premiered at the Washington D.C. Environmental Film Festival in 2025, nearly ten years after the release of the original documentary.
The screenings will each be followed by a discussion with Mary Berry, the author’s daughter and the current director of the Berry Center – an organization geared toward preserving her father’s work and advocating for farmers and healthy regional economies.
Dunn said she hopes the discussion will inspire people to put the values Berry writes about in his work into action and encourage others to make change in their own backyards.
“Mary will tell you how to [make changes] in your own community, and I think that's really what the real purpose of this kind of work is…to do good work in the world. Not just think about it in the abstract, but get your hands in the dirt and actually contribute,” said Dunn.
“Look and See: Further” will screen Tuesday night at The Kentucky Theatre and Thursday night at Maiden Alley Cinema. Tickets, showtimes and other information are available on each venue’s website.
