Reviewed by Diana Leafe Christian
Summer 2002

I sat there smiling as I watched the first of Geoph Kozeny’s two-part video documentary Visions of Utopia. There it was—an overview of what I most want people to know about community living—delivered in the comments and insights of dozens of community members at seven widely different communities.

The style is engaging and effortless. You see a community member commenting on his or her community, followed by various scenes of people working and interacting in the community that illustrate what the person is saying, with close-ups and panoramic shots, then back to the person, and so on, as first one community member, then another, comments on life in their community. You’ll see communitarians gardening, cooking, sharing meals, meeting, working, playing, laughing, crying, and caring for children. They are all ages, from toddlers to white-haired elders, and range from obviously countercultural folks to those indistinguishable from anyone in the mainstream. It’s as if you’re meeting these people and paying their community a small visit. You’ll probably find yourself smiling as you watch it too.

At the first community profiled, Camphill Special School at Beaver Run, Pennsylvania, we meet people caring for and living in community with mentally and physically disabled children. I loved it that viewers who know nothing about communities might be warmed and inspired by a glimpse of community life based on service, kindness, and the belief that art, music, celebration, and shared ritual seems to help disabled people live more functional lives as well as bring deep richness to the "normal" people who care for them. This was just the right community to begin with.

The profile of Twin Oaks, featured next, is the most comprehensive and balanced presentation of this well-known and long-lived community I’ve seen yet. In it, and indeed, at all the community profiles, people’s comments illuminate not only what is wonderful and unique about their community, but what has been challenging, and sometimes, what early illusions they may have had about community living that they revised after gaining more experience.

Geoph’s choice of featured communities shows viewers there are many ways to express community—which vary widely in size, location, purpose, and organizational principles. Besides a large rural spiritually based service-oriented community (Camphill Special School) and a large rural income-sharing egalitarian community (Twin Oaks), Visions of Utopia features a small urban collective household (Purple Rose), a rural retreat conference center community (Brietenbush Hot Springs), a large rural spiritual community (Ananda Village, California), a rural aspiring ecovillage (Earthaven), and large suburban cohousing community (Nyland Cohousing), which introduces viewers to the whole cohousing movement.

And while the widely differing community members demonstrate each community’s own unique flavor—whether political activists at Purple Rose, healers and body workers at Brietenbush, yoga practitioners at Ananda, permaculture designers at Earthaven, or the more mainstream yet progressive families at Nyland—it was really all one story of community living. Through small insights and larger overviews of their communities, these people painted a picture about community living day-to-day—the shared vision, hard work, cooperative ownership, and the need develop good processes for interpersonal communication and shared decision-making.

"Communities are testing grounds for new ideas about how to live better, more satisfying lives," observes Geoph in his concluding remarks, "lives that actualize our untapped human potential in a way that is environmentally and socially sustainable." Having visited almost 350 different intentional communities by now, Geoph probably knows more about them than anyone in North America. He’s seen almost every kind of governance and decision-making mode, for example, from anarchic to cooperative, hierarchical, and even benevolent dictatorships. Any of them can be healthy or dysfunctional, he says, but any of these seem to thrive when the members wholly believe in their system and participate in it with enthusiasm. What seems to make a community successful? "Clarity of vision, open mindedness, good communication skills, the spirit of cooperation, common sense, and plain old hard work." And what most communitarians seek in community life is not so different from what most people want: "A stable home and good education for their children, meaningful and satisfying work, a safe neighborhood, a pollution-free environment, and for many, a spiritual path that provides a basis for their other goals."

I consider Visions of Utopia a "must have" resource for anyone who wants to better understand life in intentional communities, or who’d like an easy, relatively inexpensive way to show family and friends the appeal of the cooperative, resource-sharing way of life.
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Communities Magazine: Journal of Cooperative Living, #115 Summer 2002