Sick-Amour is a 33-minute documentary / love story celebrating the lonely and forlorn tree that Joel Tauber adopted in the middle of a giant parking lot at the Rose Bowl Stadium.

A beautiful and forlorn tree, stuck in the middle of a giant parking lot. Ignored and neglected. Hit by cars, and starved for water and oxygen. The tree is attacked by pathogens and pollutants, and it has no chance to reproduce.

Joel Tauber, a young and amorous man, is drawn to the tree. Outraged by the indignities that the tree is forced to endure, he devotes himself to improving the tree’s life – watering it with giant water bags, installing tree guards to protect it from cars, building giant earrings to celebrate its beauty, lobbying to remove the asphalt beneath its canopy and to protect it with a ring of boulders, and helping the tree reproduce…approximately 200 of these sycamore ‘tree babies’ have been planted throughout Southern California.

Passionately narrated by Tauber and peppered with interviews by experts in a variety of disciplines (environmental philosophy, tree pathology, biology, ecology, urban forestry…), the film is a highly unusual documentary. It examines the tree in a personal and multi-faceted manner, offering it as a microcosm of the plight of urban trees and of forgotten individuals, in general.

At the same time, the film is a love story between Joel and the tree.

CREDITS:
Director: Joel Tauber
Producer: Joel Tauber

Format: NTSC, Widescreen
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
DVD Release Date: 2011
Run Time: 33 minutes