Past Film Screenings

Fall 2007 Food and Farming Film Festival

Tuesday, Dec 11. Living on the Wedge and Farming at the Edge

Living on the Wedge: Wisconsin’s Artisan Cheesemakers is a fun and fanciful, hour-long documentary road trip through southern Wisconsin with Mariana Coyne, food writer and the original “farm forager” for Chicago’s network of farmers’ markets.

Farming at the Edge focuses on the issue of urban sprawl and the actual farmers affected by our needs to consume more land. It concentrates on three farmers in different situations all living on the edge of development, and hopes to raise awareness of the dangers of losing open space and the disappearance of the small American Farmer.

With panelists: Dee Harley (Goat Farmer and Cheesemaker, Pescadero); Jim Montgomery (Green Fairie Urban Farm, Berkeley), Kathryn Lyddan (Executive Director of the Brentwood Agricultural Land Trust); Carleen+ Joel Weirauch (Weirauch Farm)

Discussion theme: Reviving relic farming economies and the role of artisan producers.

Screening at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley

Related Links Living on the Wedge Harley Farms Brentwood Agricultural Land Trust

Tuesday, Nov. 20 Darwin’s Nightmare

Darwin’s Nightmare is a tale about humans between the North about globalization, and about and the South, fish. Some time in the 1960’s, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria as a little scientific experiment. The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world. Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo… Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark center of the continent. This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots.

With moderator Michael Watts (Prof. Of African Studies and Geography), Anuradha Mittal (Oakland Institute)

Discussion theme: International politics of food supply and the global commodities trade.

Screening at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley

7:30 pm Tuesday, Oct. 3O SNEAK PEAK of King Corn

Don’t miss one of the year’s most important and entertaining films! With all the talk surrounding Michael Pollan’s newly infamous The Omnivore’s Dilemma, this movie has come at the perfect time! It’s the smarter, hipper Super Size Me for a hopeful new age in which people have realized that our current state of agriculture is in big trouble.

King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat – and how we farm.

With panelists: Michael Pollan (author, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Botany of Desire), Aaron Woolf (film maker), Ian Cheney +Curtis Ellis (film stars).

Discussion theme: Corn, farm subsidies, rural communities and the Food Bill.

Screening at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley. This film will open at the Shattuck theater on November 2nd.

We expect this event to be very popular, perhaps exceeding the available space at the Hillside Club. To ensure your access, you should participate in the King Corn Contest

Related Links King Corn Michael Pollan

6.30 pm Wednesday, Oct. 24 The Power of Community + Crude Awakening

Crude Awakening tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology. Shot on location at oil fields in Azerbaijan, Venezuela, the Middle East and Texas, the film visits with the world’s top experts and comes to a startling, but logical conclusion – our industrial society, built on cheap and readily available oil, must be completely re-imagined and overhauled.

With Panelists: Monica Moore (Pesticide Action Network, North America) and Miguel Altieri (Prof. of AgroEcology, UC Berkeley) Willow Rosenthal (City Slickers Farms) Antonio Roman-Alcala (Allemany Farm)

Discussion theme: What will Agriculture look like post-peak oil?

Screening at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley

Related Links Agroecology Pesticide Action network City Slicker Farms

6.30 pm Thursday, Oct. 18 Fed Up, Fowl + Pollen Nation + Islands at Risk (four short films)

Using hilarious and disturbing archival footage and featuring interviews with farmers, scientists, government officials, and activists Fed Up! presents an entertaining and informative overview of our current food production system from the Green Revolution to the Biotech Revolution and what we can do about it. Fed Up! explores the unintentional effects of pesticides, the resistance of biotechnology companies to food labeling, and the links between government officials and major biotechnology and chemical companies.

Fowl is a short documentary examining how chicken has become central to the revolution in how we produce our food. The film looks at how society has become disconnected from what we eat and how our food system has become dependent on fossil fuels.

Pollen Nation follows the journey of third generation beekeeper Jeff Anderson from the honey harvest on the High Plains to the warm winter-feeding grounds of California. It also explores the history of human interaction with bees, from ancient Egyptian beekeepers to professional bee brokers in the 21st century.

Hawai’i has been called the GMO testing capitol of the world because, in the past ten years, there have been more than 2,000 field tests of experimental genetically-engineered crops in more than 6,000 locations around the state. Islands at Risk: Genetic Engineering in Hawai’i looks at some of the possible impacts, including allergic and immune system responses from exposure to biopharmaceutical crops —both in humans and in Hawai’i’s endangered species— and contamination of regular food crops such as papaya, taro, coffee and corn with genetically modified versions of those crops.

With panelists: Singeli Agnew+ Josh Fisher (filmmakers); Angelo Sacerdote (film-maker); Claire Kremen (bee expert and recent winner of a MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Fellowship ; Charles Margulis (GE foods expert)

Discussion theme: Bees, transgenics and the prospects for pastoralism.

Screening at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley

Related Links Wholesome Goodness Pollen Nation

h3. 6.30 pm Thursday, Oct. 11 Our Daily Bread + We Feed the World

Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds – a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which provides our society’s standard of living. Our Daily Bread is a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn’t always easy to digest – and in which we all take part. A pure, meticulous and high-end film experience that enables the audience to form their own ideas.

We Feed the World is a film about food and globalization, fishermen and farmers, long-distance lorry drivers and high-powered corporate executives, the flow of goods and cash flow–a film about scarcity amid plenty. With its unforgettable images, the film provides insight into the production of our food and answers the question of what world hunger has to do with us.

With San Fransico area breadbakers: Steve Sullivan (founder Acme Breads); Julie Cummins (CUESA); Phoenix Pastaficio; and Eduardo Morell (Morell’s bread)

Moderated by Renato Sardo (ex. President of Slow Food International) .

Discussion theme : local vs. global: the divergence of food culture.

Screening at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley

Related Links Our Daily Bread Acme Bread Tartine Arizmendi Center for Ecoliteracy Slow Food

6.30 pm Tuesday, September 11 Harvest of Shame + Broken Limbs

HARVEST OF SHAME aired on CBS the day after Thanksgiving in 1960, this report, narrated by Edward R. Murrow, followed migrant farm workers from their Florida homes to farmlands across the nation. The film likely was the first to document the appalling living and working conditions of these families. Morrow quotes a Southern farmer who says of his workers, “We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.”

Presented by Dan Rather, Murrow’s HARVEST OF SHAME is among the most famous television documentaries of all time. Richly photographed and arrestingly poignant, this long-acclaimed 1960 exposé on the plight of migrant farm workers resonated deeply for a nation unfamiliar with such brutally honest depictions of living conditions that, as Murrow remarks, “wrong the dignity of man.” Smartly televised to millions of Americans the day after Thanksgiving to better tap into their emotions, Murrow’s indispensable classic led to permanent changes in the laws protecting workers’ rights.

BROKEN LIMBS explores Wenatchee, Washington, “Apple Capital of the World,” in the heart of the Pacific Northwest prospered for nearly a century as home to the famed Washington apple. But the good times have vanished. Apple orchardists by the thousands are going out of business.

Filmmaker and son of an apple orchadist Guy Evans, sets out on a journey where he witnesses small farmers forced off their land as they struggle to compete against the Goliaths that populate today’s global economy. Evans happens upon an entirely new breed of farmer, practitioners of a model for farming called sustainable agriculture, finding success by going against the grain of conventional agriculture.

With panelists: Christopher Cook (author, Diet for a Dead Planet); Ann Lopez ( Farmworkers Journey);

Jason Mark (farmer, journalist), Carey Knecht (Greenbelt Alliance)

Discussion theme : Dislocation in Agricultural landscapes, sprawl, immigration and crisis.

Screening at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley

Related Links Diet for a Dead planet Greenbelt Alliance Farmworkers Journey

6.30 pm Wednesday, Sept. 5 Life and Debt

Utilizing excerpts from the award-winning non-fiction text “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, Life & Debt is a woven tapestry of sequences focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas. By combining traditional documentary telling with a stylized narrative framework, the complexity of international lending, structural adjustment policies and free trade will be understood in the context of the day-to-day realities of the people whose lives they impact.

With panelists: Frederic Mousouq (The Oakland Institute); Debi Barker (International Forum on Globalization)

Discussion theme : International Development in Agriculture and it’s casualties.

Screening at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley

Related Links Oakland Institute IFG

6.30 pm Thursday, Aug. 30 The Real Dirt on Farmer John

With panelists: Jessica Prentice (author, Full Moon Feast) Ned Conwell (Blue House Farm CSA, RDI), Albie Miles (AgroEcology), Ben Feldman (Berkeley farmers market manager)

Discussion theme : the farm organism, holistic nutrition, alternative markets.

Screening in the Ground floor auditorium, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley

Related Links: Angelic Organics Blue House Farm Three Stone Hearth

The Food and Farming Film Festival was presented in cooperation with:

Food First; Community Alliance with Family Farmers; ISEC (International Society for Ecology and Culture); The Ethicurian Food Blog; Organic Volunteers; The “Local” Foodstand; Slow Food San Francisco, (CUESA, Center for Food Safety, Bi-Rite Market, CCOF, Cal GE Free) and the Knight Center for Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

SAFE is deeply grateful for the support of these organizations + sponsors.

Download the flyer for the film series

Fall 2006 Film Series

  • 11/6/06 – THE FUTURE OF FOOD – with panelists Ignacio Chapela, Deborah Koons Garcia (director) and Christopher Cook (Diet for a Small Planet)
  • 11/20/06 – RIPE FOR CHANGE – with film-maker Emiko Omori, Tyrone Hayes and MIguel Altieri
  • 11/29/06 – HARVEST OF SHAME

4/17/07 Earth week 2007 film festival

  • 1. FOWL – A gorgeous and ruthless short film about the poultry industry by young Irish film maker Andrew Legge 18 mins
  • 2. FED UP – Wonderful, low budget movie about GMOs. Some like it even better than Future of Food. 57 mins
  • 3. KING CORN – 2 Friends decide to plant an acre of corn in Iowa, similar to Omnivore’s Dillemna. 23 mins
  • 4. MONDOVINO. – A look at the globalization of the wine business, totally riveting documentary filmed in France, Italy, California, Brazil. 90 mins