Chicago owes its glorious parkland to visionary landscape architect Jens Jensen, whose genius is described in “Jens Jensen: The Living Green,” director Carey Lundin’s award-winning feature documentary.
To help build a movement to inspire communities to get behind Jensen’s plan for healthy, green cities, says Lundin of Viva Lundin Productions, “we are holding a fundraiser to raise $20,000 to air the documentary on PBS stations.”
The fundraiser Sunday, Nov. 8, is part of landscape architectural firm Site Design’s 25th anniversary celebration, at Columbia College, 820 S. Michigan (the former Ebony Magazine building), 4-6 p.m., where “Jensen” will be one of three major exhibits.
Jensen created Chicago’s great, enduring Columbus, Humboldt, Garfield and Douglas Parks and 15 small ones throughout the city. He organized and inspired early conservation movements that led to the creation of the Cook County Forest Preserves, the Illinois state park systems, the Indiana Dunes other parks throughout the country.
Lundin and her partners will talk about how Danish-born Jensen in the last century led a revolution to make crowded city life sustainable, “a concept which only now is finding true resonance, as most of the world lives in a city,” she says.
A $50 tax deductible donation is suggested and tickets may be purchased here.
Lundin is currently working a sequel to her 2013 Jensen film, she says, “to show people how what Jensen was talking about and how he set off a movement to bring awareness of the plight of people living in ‘ecologically disadvantaged neighborhoods.’”
The new film, “Life and Death in a Park” is about the people who live around the little “Jardin Cito” park in Little Village and “the life, death and rebirth of the neighborhood,” she says.
While filming the new doc is in progress, Lundin is setting up screenings throughout the country “to show environmental and other groups where Jensen left off historically, and how saving by saving neighborhood spaces now can prevent future disasters.”
