WESTVILLE | Public showings of the film "The Garden" will be offered through a collaboration among the Purdue University North Central Odyssey 2009 - 2010 Arts and Cultural Events Series, LaPorte County Public Library and Michigan City Public Library. The showings are free and open to the public.

The film will be shown at 6 p.m. Sept. 15 in LaPorte High School's Schulze Hall, 602 F St., LaPorte;

2 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Michigan City Public Library, 100 E. Fourth St., Michigan City and at 7 p.m. Sept. 23 at PNC in the Library-Student-Faculty Building Assembly Hall Room 02. The film is not rated.

"The Garden," a 2008 Academy-award nominated documentary, tells the story of a years-long struggle over a 14-acre piece of urban farm land in Los Angeles. Known as the South Central Farm, the land was planted and cultivated by mostly low-income Latino families. The city-sponsored farm was tended by some 300-plus families and harvested fruit and vegetables and built a sense of community and well being. After farming the land since 1993, the city notified the farmers in 2003, that the land had been sold. And so, they were ordered to vacate.

Director Scott Hamilton Kennedy captured the complex events that followed during a three-year struggle to save the land. The farmers subsequently became a formidable force of their own. Some political activists were shown to be power brokers with their own political motives and backroom conversations and deals complicate matters.

Purdue University North Central Odyssey Arts and Cultural Events Series continues throughout the year. A complete schedule can be found at www.pnc.edu.

For more information about this film, or the Odyssey series, contact Judy Jacobi, PNC assistant vice chancellor of Marketing and Community Relations, at (219) 462-4197, ext. 5593.

--For The Times