When filmmaker Robert Bates sees his youngest daughter, 4 1/2, out in the garden, plucking off a strawberry or nibbling a string bean she helped grow, he experiences joy and a jolt of hope.

"It's important for our children to have their hands in the soil and grow things, and with that comes a respect for food and for cooking. When kids farm, and when kids cook, they eat a lot more healthily, and that's been documented," said Bates, a Hawaii resident for 20-plus years who moved to Oregon a couple of years ago to work with his friend Brian Kimmel on a movie, "Ingredients," that will be aired at the Hawaii International Film Festival this weekend.

Bates, who loves the Islands, has an elder daughter here and divides his time between Hawaii and the Northwest, wasn't sure he wanted to move to work on the project Kimmel proposed to him, to document the then very young, very scattered and fragmented "local food" movement. But he had to be in Seattle anyway, so he planned a trip to Oregon to talk to Kimmel.

On the way, he heard a program on National Public Radio that changed his mind. It said that young people today have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, mostly due to lifestyle factors and particularly due to unhealthy eating habits.

"When I reached Brian's house, he opened the door and I said, 'I'm on,' " said Bates, who is in Hawaii this week for the local premiere of "Ingredients" and is often on Oahu for his work as a director for Share Your Table (www.shareyourtable.com), a culinary Web site.

SEEING CONNECTION

Bates was raised in Phoenix by a mom who enjoyed the convenience of processed foods as much as the next 1960s housewife, but nevertheless he gained an appreciation for that which was good and fresh, because their home was surrounded by citrus groves. "We ate a ton of 'em," he recalls of the oranges that hung from nearby trees.

He was never much of a cook, he admits. "I kind of enjoyed trying to cook, but I was pretty bad at it," he says.

But then he moved to Hawaii on a whim at age 23. "So many of my attitudes, not just toward food but toward community, were formed here," he said.

And in the '80s, Bates began working with TV producer Melanie Kosaka on shows such as "Hawaii Cooks with Roy Yamaguchi" and "Kitchen Sessions" with uber-chef Charlie Trotter in Chicago. He began to see through the eyes of these chefs and their vendors the connection between soil and kitchen, and to care about it.

A FOOD REVOLUTION

"Ingredients," subtitled "The Local Food Movement Takes Root," details how people around the country — not just in Oregon — are taking their plates into their own hands. In interviews with such pioneers as restaurateur and garden advocate Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and writer, nutritionist and passionate advocate for a less-processed diet Joan Dye Gussow, it walks the viewer through how American agriculture came to be dominated by just a few crops, how the family farm became almost impossible to sustain, how we came to rely on food from farther and farther away, how cheap food became a kind of trap. And then it tells how the local food pioneers have begun to re-introduce us to seasonal foods, traditional foods, what have come to be called heirloom seeds and varieties of plants.

Bates believes the film should have a special resonance for people here. We have a very high degree of obesity and obesity-related diseases such as diabetes. We have lost much of our agricultural land and, with it, much of our connection to our own past.

"I think of the kinds of dishes and the types of ingredients we need to make our unique dishes, and if we lose our farmers and our farmland, we won't have those," said Bates. "If we keep close (to our sources of food), we keep nutrition and flavor, the money stays here, it's not going to some corporate headquarters."

Especially here in the Islands, farming has been seen as a something you do in the first generation, earning money so your children won't have to follow in your dirt-caked footsteps. But, says Bates, after shooting the film and experiencing the care of the farmers (many of them second- and third-generation) and the pride and the joy, not to mention being outdoors in the fresh air, "I cannot think of anything more noble than someone who grows food; food brings a community together in such a unique way."

The film, which glows with the vibrant colors and textures of fresh-from-the-soil foods, introduces the view to farmers and chefs who have formed partnerships that have bloomed into other opportunities, such as various forms of co-ops and buying groups. They show what happens when children are exposed to the farming lifestyle and allowed to grow their own food.

If this sounds a bit like eighth-grade, fifth-period science class and a long snooze, be assured. The full-length film is beautifully photographed, absorbing because of the human element that filmmakers have kept central to the flow, following the lives of farmers, some of whom have returned to family land in spite of economic factors that seemed to make that a poor choice.

Bates understands that for many, the whole shop-at-the-farmers-market, carry-a-biodegradable-bag thing is seen as elitist and unrealistic. The film's message is that this is not so. He believes in a layered approach: Grow some of your own food (even if it's just a few pots on the länai), buy some at farmers markets (which are becoming more frequent and convenient), keep a good pantry of lower-fat, lower-cost staples (beans and such).

Says Bates: "Maybe we'll eat a little less, but we'll eat better."