STORY SYNOPSIS

The Fifth Sacred Thing

A Feature Film Based on the Novel by Starhawk

Screenplay by Starhawk

Bird is a magically gifted musician raised in the green and flourishing city San Franciscans have built out of the social and political breakdowns of the early 21st century. African-American, he’s grown up in a culture without divisions of race or religion, where streams flow through garden streets. Four things are sacred – air, fire, water and earth. No one can own them or hoard them, and everyone has enough.

But he gives up his music, his love and his home to fight the ruthless Stewards who control the Southlands. Battered, tortured, his hands smashed, he’s trapped in a prison in the south.

The Stewards have bred an army they control with ‘boosters that enhance the immune system’s response to a toxic stew of bio-warfare diseases. After years of preparations they are ready to invade the north.

Bird escapes to warn his beloved city. He reunites with his childhood sweetheart, Madrone, a gifted healer. Compassionate to the point of recklessness, she risks her life to battle monster-viruses in the spirit realms. They rekindle their love, but Madrone is called to the south to bring healing to the Resistance.

Without guns, weapons or an army, how will the peaceful city fight the invaders?

Can they counter the attackers without losing the spirit that has made them what they are?

Bird’s grandmother, Maya, wise-woman and storyteller, has a vision. “Say to your enemies: There is a place for you at our table, if you will choose to join us.” But Bird has seen too much violence and cruelty to believe that they can win over the soldiers. Bitterly divided, the city adopts a strategy of nonviolent resistance that allows for sabotage, but not killing.

The army invades, dams the streams and paves the gardens. Bird leads the militants that sabotage dams and dozers. To stop the pillaging of the redwoods they even blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Stewards respond with ruthless reprisals. Bird is recaptured, tortured, and forced to wear the uniform of the Stewards.

Madrone meets the ‘Hillboys’ of the Southlands Resistance as they dog the heels of the advancing army. In the irradiated lands near the old Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor, strange creatures roam, ‘monsters’ who save her from capture, and bee priestesses who rescue her after a raid goes wrong, and initiate her into the mysteries of the hive.