A Dresden filmmaker has chronicled the challenges and struggles of a local farming couple.

Filmed during the “disastrous” growing season of 2009, “Goranson Farm: An Uncertain Harvest” follows Jan Goranson and Rob Johanson, their family and the community that surrounds them as they struggle against the worst growing season in their 25 years of farming, according to filmmaker William Kunitz.

Kunitz spent 2009 and into 2010 following the family to produce a film “that takes the viewer from the joy of spring planting through more than 20 days of rain in June and into a battle with late potato blight, the same disease that caused the Irish potato famine,” according to a news release from Kunitz.

The film is a testament to the skill, tenacity and dogged determination of the family to survive an uncertain harvest and to continue to serve the community that supports them, Kunitz said.

Kunitz has been making films since he was 14 and worked as a producer/director for Ad Media in Augusta in the late 1970s. He also has worked as an independent producer for political campaigns and nonprofit organizations. In 2005, he produced “Colonial Pemaquid, A Remembrance.”

“Goranson Farm: An Uncertain Harvest” had its premiere at the Camden International Film Festival in September. It will be shown on MPBN at 10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 3 and and repeated at 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 5.

For more on the film and to view selected scenes, visit goransonfarmfilm.org. For more information about the film, call Kunitz at 725-3408.

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