Caroline Vitzthum

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The most important plant in the world (2024), 16mm Kodak colour film, 4K film, sound, 16 minutes.




The most important plant in the world is the first in a series of short films commissioned by the IUCN UK Peatland Programme. The film series is collectively titled Sphagnum portraits and brings together ambitious works undertaken by individuals, environmental charities, and community groups to help share the importance of peatlands and engage in restoring damaged sites across the country.

The most important plant in the world premiered at the IUCN UK Peatland Programme’s Peatlands, People, and Nature conference in Aviemore in September 2024. The film portrays the collective efforts between ‘Moors for the Future Partnership’ and BeadaMoss, a family-run nursery based in the East Midlands in England, to re-introduce Sphagnum moss to a peatland site in the Peak District, which suffered from a severe wildfire in 2018. 

BeadaMoss specialises in micro-propagating Sphagnum moss for large-scale peatland restoration projects across the UK and Europe, thereby partnering with various environmental charities across Europe. Small quantities of Sphagnum moss are collected from a damaged site and micro-propagated under controlled conditions in the greenhouses at BeadaMoss, which are then taken out onto the moor for plug-planting as a form of gradually re-vegetating the damaged site.



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Credits: 

A film by Caroline Vitzthum 
Commissioned by the IUCN UK Peatland Programme
4K, drone, & 16mm film footage by Caroline Vitzthum
Edited & Sound Design by Oliver Sutherland 
Music by Ben Stepner
Sound Recording by Caroline Vitzthum 
Font Design by David Einwaller


Featuring: 

Joe Margetts
Neal Wright
Robbie Carnegie


Also Featuring:

Nico Vela
Billy Fowler
Moira Males
Felicity Hill
Poppy Gibson
Emily Wild
Luke Wykes
Luke Hallam
Finley Butt
Tim Parfitt
Sadie Manning
Jacqueline Wright
Neal Wright
Anna Len
Svitlana Pasachnikova
Will Turner
Naomi Solleveld
Laila Babjakova
Fingal Symonds
Dylan Gardner
Rianne Johnstone
Julie Bagguley
Elaine Ace
Elaine Highet
Katie Vincent
Ann Horsfall


Special Thanks: 

Sphagnum 
Jane Akerman
Emma Hinchliffe 
Sadie Manning

© Caroline Vitzthum, 2024. All rights reserved.

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