Books and DVDs

Films about Food

A great list compiled by Jenny Cameron and Co and includes their comments.
Black Gold
About coffee growing and global coffee markets (TW)
Promo says “As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. In this eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar industry, Black Gold traces one man's fight for a fair price.”  http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/
Botany of Desire: DVD Based on the book by Michael Pollan.
Promo says “Featuring Michael Pollan and based on his best-selling book, this special takes viewers on an eye-opening exploration of the human relationship with the plant world -- seen from the plants' point of view. Narrated by Frances McDormand, the program shows how four familiar species -- the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato -- evolved to satisfy our yearnings for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control.”
All sorts of extras available on the website, http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/. See especially, http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/video-michael-pollan.php
Community Supported Agriculture
There are some great YouTube CSA docos. The one I love the most (and students respond to really well) features this wonderfully warm and infectious farmer (JC):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUBf_a3EtQU
Another good one is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J1iMOvWwJo
Dan Rather Reports: Hardwick Vermont
Great report on a local interconnected food system (KW)
It’s brilliant (JC)
http://vimeo.com/7729181
Dirt
It’s fantastic, very high production value (SH)
Great quotes from promo, “Dirt might be more alive than we are” “We are dirt”. Includes stories of hope!
http://dirtthemovie.org
The End of the Line
A film about fisheries (TW)
“The inconvenient truth about the oceans” “Imagine a world without fish”
http://endoftheline.com/
Farm
“A short documentary about Georgia's next generation of organic and sustainable farmers. "FARM!" was shot entirely on the Flip Ultra.”
http://vimeo.com/1937663
A Farm for the Future
Great BBC doc about the food industry's dependence on oil and what we might do about it, including some nice permaculture examples. (KW)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8
Fast Food Nation
Half- documentary, half-narrative based on Schlosser's book. (KW)
http://www.foxsearchlight.com/fastfoodnation
Food Fight
Promo says “FOOD FIGHT is a fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how the California food movement has created a counterrevolution against big agribusiness. Nowadays we call it the New American Cuisine. It is a new food chain, one that honors the farmer and the local community, one that is sustainable, seasonal, and organic, tastes better, and is healthier.”
http://www.youtube.com/user/FoodFightTheDoc#p/a/u/1/MVwxANELftg
Food Inc.
Fantastic (JC)
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
http://www.foodincmovie.com/
Fresh
Excellent interviews with Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin, and others (KW)
Promo says “New thinking about what we’re eating”. “FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system.”
http://www.freshthemovie.com
Fridays at the Farm
A beautiful story of a city family’s connection with a CSA filmed in the majority with a time lapse camera. (RP)
Promo says “Feeling disconnected from their food, a filmmaker and his family decide to join a community supported organic farm. As he photographs the growing process, the filmmaker moves from passive observer to active participant in the planting and harvesting of vegetables. Featuring lush time-lapse and macro photography sequences compiled from nearly 20,000 still images, this personal essay is a father’s meditation on his blossoming family and community.”
http://www.coyopa.com/fridays-at-the-farm.html
The Future of Food
Promo says “a groundbreaking documentary released in 2004, distills the complex technology and key regulatory, legal, ethical, environmental and consumer issues
surrounding the troubling changes happening in the food system today … into terms the average person can easily understand. It empowers consumers to understand the consequences of their food choices on our future.”
http://www.thefutureoffood.com/
The Garden
Promo says “The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community. But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis …If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up? … The Garden has the pulse of verité with the narrative pull of fiction, telling the story of the country’s largest urban farm, backroom deals, land developers, green politics, money, poverty, power, and racial discord. The film explores and exposes the fault lines in American society and raises crucial and challenging questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.”
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
http://www.thegardenmovie.com/
Genetically Modified Foods: Panacea or Poison?
Scary stuff, completely untested (KW)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7727700015953778314
The Gleaners and I
Interesting doc on waste and resourcefulness, directed by Agnes Varda (TW)
Read the reviews from Rotten Tomatoes (which is doesn’t get), http://au.rottentomatoes.com/m/gleaners_and_i/
Good Food
Produced by Netflix: Media that Matters
It contains sixteen mini docos on food related issues, including classics like the Meatrix. The first video gets into agriculture, colonialism, first world farm subsidy structures and heavily indebted countries like Senegal by focusing on peanuts. (SH)
Very clever, amusing and succinct. (SH)
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Media_That_Matters_Good_Food/70107145
Good Food
Promo says “Official Selection 2008 Seattle International Film Festival - A stronger, more sustainable food system is beginning to emerge in the Pacific Northwest, one that contributes to consumers' health, to the health of the environment, and to regional food security. GOOD FOOD, to be released in Seotember 2008, celebrates what has been achieved so far and presents some of the innovative small farmers who remain as stewards of the land by developing these sustainable practices.”
www.goodfoodthemovie.org
The Greenhorns
A film in development about the rise of young farmers (KW)
Promo says “The Greenhorns documentary film, now in post-production, explores the lives of America's young farming community - its spirit, practices, and needs. It is the filmmaker's hope that by broadcasting the stories and voices of these young farmers, we can build the case for those considering a career in agriculture - to embolden them, to entice them, and to recruit them into farming.”
http://www.thegreenhorns.net/
From YouTube, the film looks fantastic (JC), http://vimeo.com/5309127
Grow your Own (2007)
Described as “a gentle sweet-smelling comedy that is blessed with plenty of British charm, but isn't likely to bother the box office in a hurry. Set in the North of England, a bunch of grumpy old men spend their days nurturing their beloved allotments, while passing comment on their neighbours' vegetables. They're less than happy when a family of asylum seekers move in on their precious patch.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2007/06/11/grow_your_own_2007_review.shtml
Growing Power
Great little YouTube doco about Growing Power Urban Farm in Milwaukee (JC)
http://vimeo.com/4264325
Homegrown
About the Dervaes family, remarkable urban gardeners (KW)
Promo says “HOMEGROWN follows the Dervaes family who run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, California. While "living off the grid", they harvest over 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter of an acre, make their own bio diesel, power their computers with the help of solar panels, and maintain a website that gets 4,000 hits a day. The film is an intimate human portrait of what it's like to live like "Little House on the Prairie" in the 21st Century.”
http://www.homegrown-film.com
Intervention
Primarily about the compulsory income quarantining in Australian Indigenous communities (in the Northern Territory), it is also about the impacts of this for food access (KL)
Promo says “Produced by award-winning film maker Tom Zubrycki, (with ABC’s David Jowsey as Commissioning Editor) and written and directed by Julie Nimmo, The Intervention was shot over a an 8-month period and features the lives of ordinary community residents as they experience the Intervention first hand, as well as the various government and business workers who all come together to implement it.”
http://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/1087.html
King Corn
I love this film. The two guys are so personable; the farmers they meet, terrific; and what they tell us about the corn industry, amazing. I couldn’t believe that they can’t actually eat the corn they grow, it is so modified for corn syrup etc. (JC)
http://www.kingcorn.net/
The Left Overs: A documentary about people who eat trash
Promo says “A group of five diverse people have challenged themselves to drive 2000 km down the east coast of Australia in a veggie oil powered van, living on nothing but waste. With zero money but plenty of passion they put both themselves and society to the test.”
http://theleftovers.net/about.html
Life and Debt
About Structural Adjustment IMF/Word Bank in Jamaica. Has some powerful segments on how imported foods destroyed the market for local agricultural products. (TW)
http://www.lifeanddebt.org/
The Meatrix series
Powerful cartoons about factory farming (KW)
http://www.themeatrix.com
No Impact Man
Interesting tale of a guy who decides to make close to no impact for a year - in New York! (KW)
http://www.noimpactdoc.com
2009 Organic Film Trailer Competition
You can see all the trailers at http://views.newhope.com/organicfilm/Videos/tabid/79/Default.aspx
Includes The Greenhorns and Farm (see above).
Our Daily Bread
A strange film. It's pretty far outside the norm, but worth a look. For starters, it has no dialogue, and no experts to deliver it. Instead, it's a series of well-crafted segments with still cameras looking out onto chicken processing plants, feed lots, etc. The film's lack of verbal commentary seems to leave a lot of open questions about its subject matter, and it encourages viewers to come up with their own. What you get (or at least what I got) is a tense but weirdly calm meditation on food. (NG)
In any case, I don't know how well it would work in a classroom, but it's definitely worth checking out, if only for a change in the way we watch documentaries. (NG)
http://www.ourdailybread.at/jart/projects/utb/website.jart?rel=en&conten...
Peak Moment Conversations, on:
The Heart of Permaculture
Suburban Backyard Gardens: Cultivating Abundance
Transforming Communities Through Local Business
http://www.peakmoment.tv
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
About Cuba's "green" revolution post USSR oil imports. Lots of investigation of organic farming and urban gardening and a pretty upbeat grassroots group of people. (TW)
http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php
Squeezed: The Cost of Free Trade in the Asia Pacific
http://www.squeezedthefilm.com/
Super Size Me:
A humorous but scathing look at McDonaldization/the culture of gluttony and its opponents (TW)
TED Segments (Technology, Entertainment, Design)
Don't forget the brilliant 20 minute gems on TED.com. Here are the ones tagged with "Food": (http://www.ted.com/talks/tags/id/111 (KW)
And these are some favorites from KW:
Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities
http://www.ted.com/talks/carolyn_steel_how_food_shapes_our_cities.html
Dan Barber: How I fell in love with a fish
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html
Paul Stamets: Six ways mushrooms can save the world
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html
Mark Bittman: What's wrong with what we eat
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html
Think Global Eat Local: A Diet for a Sustainable Society
“A film celebrating & exploring local food systems, farmers markets, food boxes, food cooperatives, community farms & community gardens, edible school gardens. 15 years of footage over 15 countries.”
In two parts on YouTube,
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7156195379871111821
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFfE9TUwCZk
Truck Farm
I just love this! – an old dodge converted into a truck farm in Brooklyn, NYC. Done with great humour and extremely high professional quality. (JC)
Episode 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGGUfYFdFrc&feature=related
Episode 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSFJPqzJp8M&feature=related
Urban Food Growing in Havana, Cuba
From the BBC series “Around the World in 80 Gardens” (2008) showing some of the urban food gardening in Havana, Cuba. Presented by Monty Don.
I love this (and so it seems do my students). Monty is infectious, the music is great, and the examples inspiring. (JC)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRz34Dee7XY
The World According to Monsanto
Long French film about the evil that is Monsanto (KW).
Promo says “a new documentary was aired on French television - a documentary that Americans won’t ever see. The gigantic bio-tech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844
Extras
Excellent list of food-related films: http://www.filmsforaction.org/films/?Subject=16&SubjectName=food
Another film list is at http://www.transitionus.org/resources/films
Contributors
JC – Jenny Cameron
NG – Nate Gabriel
SH – Stephen Healy
KL – Kristen Lyons
RP – Robert Pekin
KW – Karen Werner
TW – Ted White