Sustainable Table (Tufts Library) (52 Minutes)

Food Systems Planning Coalition Sustainable Agriculture and Food Film List E-mail [email protected] to add another film. Updated 2/20/2010

Big River (2010. 30 minutes) - A King Corn companion. “Big River” brings the two friends back to Iowa on a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact on their acre of corn to people and places downstream. Ellis and Cheney trade in their combine for a canoe and travel south on the network of rivers that connects their acre to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. www.bigriverfilm.com

Coming Home: E.F. Schumacher and the Reinvention of the Local Economy (37 minutes) - In 1973, British economist E.F. Schumacher wrote “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered"... a book that offered a vision of an economy driven by a desire for harmony, not greed; an economy based on community and ecological values, not global financial derivatives. In the 1970s, “Small is Beautiful" helped launch a back-to-the-land movement that is the ancestor to the Local Food Revolution of today. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZxTqOV02vI

Cuba, the Accidental Revolution (2006. Two 45 minute films) - Examines Cuba's success in providing for itself in the face of a massive economic crisis, and how its latest revolutions -- an agricultural revolution and a revolution in science and medicine -- are having repercussions around the world. www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/cubas.html

Deconstructing Supper (2002. 48 minutes) - A chef explores the world of GMO foods when his customers ask him to serve up non-GMO foods. www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/decon.html

Detroit:green (2009. 15 minutes) - focuses on Earthworks Urban Farm in Detroit, MI, the surrounding community members, the health aspects of eating fresh food. www.amyitis.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/detroitgreen/

Dive! (2010. 42 minutes) - Follow filmmaker Jeremy Seifert and his circle of friends as they “dumpster dive” in the back alleys and gated garbage receptacles of L.A.’s supermarkets. In the process, they uncover thousands of dollars worth of good food and an ugly truth about waste in America: grocery stores know they are wasting and most refuse to do anything about it. http://www.divethefilm.com/

Eating Alabama (?) - From April 2008 to April 2009 we ate only food grown or raised in the state of Alabama. We embarked on this gastronomical adventure to focus on sustainable farming and to make a case for a revitalization of our state's rural economy. We filmed the whole process, and now we're putting together a documentary. www.eatingalabama.org/

Faces From the New Farm (2007. 35 minutes) - Liz Tylander, Kat Shiffler & Lara Sheets. From Washington, DC to Montreal and back, the trio interview enthusiastic gardeners in urban areas, youth involved in food justice, new immigrant farmers and a new generation of back-to-the- landers. The film features The Food Project, Nuestras Raices, The Germantown Community Farm, The Intervale Center, and many others redefining the word "farmer". This is a great film for anyone interested in grassroots food and farming initiatives or do-it-yourself film projects and bike adventures. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNc8aYGX7Rk http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/videos/2864/

A Farm for the Future (2009. 50 minutes) - In this BBC film, wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family's farm in Devon England into a low energy farm for the future. Youtube clips of the entire film available at: http://thecluelessgardeners.blogspot.com/2009/10/one-possible-solution.html

Sustainable Agriculture and Food Film List (some at Tufts Media Library)

The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle (1997)- The film follows the first successful organizing drive of farm workers in the United States, while recounting the many failed and dramatic attempts to unionize that led up to this victory. Among the many barriers to organizing was the Bracero Program, which flooded the fields with Mexican contract workers between World War II and the 1960s. http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fightfields/

Food Fight (2008. 91 minutes) - A fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how the California food movement rebelled against big agribusiness to launch the local organic food movement. http://foodfightthedoc.com/

Food, Inc (2009. 94 minutes) - Lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing how our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profits ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. Reveals surprising - and often shocking truths - about what we eat, how it's produced and who we have become as a nation. www.foodincmovie.com

The Future of Food (2004. 88 minutes) - Documents the trend of unlabeled genetically-modified foods which have become increasingly prevalent in grocery stores. Unravels the complex web of market and political forces that are changing the nature of what we eat. Explores organic and sustainable agriculture as alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture. www.thefutureoffood.com/

Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980. 51 minutes)-A documentary on the history of garlic. Blank interviews chefs, garlic lovers, and historians about the their love of the 'stinking rose.' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080776/

The Garden (2006. 80 minutes) - 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. www.thegardenmovie.com/

Global Banquet: The Politics of Food (2001. Two 25 minute segments) - this gives a great primer on what has happened to the food system and sets the stage for reclaiming it for the people. www.olddogdocumentaries.com/vid_gb.html

Grapes of Wrath (1941. 129 minutes) - Oklahoma in the Thirties is a dustbowl and dispossessed farmers migrate westward to California. After terrible trials en route they become little more than slave labor. Among the throng are the Joads who refuse to knuckle under http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032551/plotsummary

The Greenhorns (unreleased as of yet) - Severine von Tscarner Fleming. In the autumn of 2007 we officially began seeking out mentors and characters for a film, traveling the country with a confident intuitive sense of an emerging movement of young farmers and a series of borrowed cameras and generous cinematographers. On the road for these 2 years we have found that the movement has emerged--scrappy, resourceful, adaptive young Americans have brought the products and the spirit of this movement into the sun, and we are proud to be the reporters of its successes and a hub for a much-needed centralized network. www.thegreenhorns.net/trailer.html

Sustainable Agriculture and Food Film List (some at Tufts Media Library)

Grown in Detroit (2009. 60 minutes) - focuses on the Catherine Ferguson Academy (high school for teen moms) in Detroit, MI, the challenge of raising kids while going to school, the farm on site of the school, the principle and teachers. www.grownindetroit.filmmij.nl/

HomeGrown (2008. 52 minutes) - 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. www.homegrown-film.com/

How to Cook Your Life (2007. 94 minutes) - Dörrie enlists the help of the charismatic Zen Master Edward Espe Brown to explain the guiding principles of Zen Buddhism as they apply to the preparation of food as well as life itself. “How a person goes about dealing with the ingredients for his meals” explains Dörrie “says a lot about him. How To Cook Your Life teaches us to be attentive in our everyday dealings with the most mundane things and also open our eyes to one of the most beautiful occupations: cooking.” (Boston Public Library) http://www.cookyourlifemovie.com/home.html#

How to Save the World: one man, one cow, one planet (2007. 98 minutes) - Exposes globalization and its mantra of infinite growth in a finite world for what it really is: an environmental and human disaster. But across India, farmers are fighting back. By reviving an arcane form of agriculture, they are saving their poisoned lands and exposing the biocolonialism of multinational corporations." www.onemanonecow.com/

King Corn (2007. 90 minutes) - Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa, to find out how the modest corn kernel conquered America. With the help of real farmers, powerful fertilizer, government aid, and genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hidden truths about America's modern food system. http://www.kingcorn.net/

Life in Debt (2001. 86 minutes)-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. http://lifeanddebt.org/

The Meaning of Food (2004. 180 minutes) - So many cultural and religious celebrations center on food, but how did this come to be? Discover the rich and varied history of American dining in this three-episode series. www.pbs.org/opb/meaningoffood/

Meat Jim (2007. 8 minutes) - Two college vegetarians think they can transform the eating habits of a local cowboy because it's better for the earth, or so they think. The vibrant vaquero has his own thoughts though. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ-aKp9pLLY

Sustainable Agriculture and Food Film List (some at Tufts Media Library)

Nourish (2009. 30 minute PBS television special and 11 short films) - With beautiful visuals and engaging stories, Nourish explores the provocative question: What's the story of your food? By providing a “big picture” view of our food system, Nourish reveals the many ways that food connects to our environment, our health and our communities. Most importantly, Nourish offers specific action steps that viewers can take to help create a sustainable food future. www.nourishlife.org

The Organic Opportunity (26 minutes) - Tells the story of Woodbury County, Iowa's innovative economic development campaign centered on the development of local, organic agriculture. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8M3TUi9AE

Our Daily Bread (2005. 92 minutes) - Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming. Produced between October 2003 and October 2005 the film looks into the places where food is produced in European farms, greenhouses, processing plants and other places where crops and animals are cultivated and processed to become food for people. The images of food and animals treated as an industrial products are presented without comment. www.ourdailybread.at/jart/projects/utb/website.jart?rel=en

The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (2006. 53 minutes) - When Cuba lost access to Soviet oil in the early 1990s, the country faced an immediate crisis -- feeding the population -- and an ongoing challenge: how to create a new low-energy society. Cuba transitioned from large, fossil-fuel intensive farming to small, less energy-intensive organic farm and urban gardens, and from a highly industrial society to a more sustainable one. www.powerofcommunity.org/

The Price of Sugar (2007. 90 minutes) - This documentary profiles the courageous Father Christopher Hartley, a Spanish priest who travels to the Dominican Republic to stop a modern- day slavery operation. Thousands of Haitian men are forced to work in inhumane conditions to harvest sugar cane for the wealthy. http://www.thepriceofsugar.com/inex2.shtml

The Real Cost of Our Food (?)– Takes a closer look at the California Central Valley and the economic externalities, such as environmental pollution and resultant health problems to poor, mostly Latino farm workers.

The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005. 82 minutes) - The award-winning true story of third- generation American farmer John Peterson's hero's journey of success, tribulation, failure and rebirth. He's not only a farmer, he's an artist too. www.angelicorganics.com

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (2005. 60 minutes) - A small group of observers, the "Street Life Project", sets out to study how people use the parks and plazas of the city. With the help of time-lapse filming they find that what makes a place work are the basics--a place to sit, for example, food, sun, a passing show. www.directcinema.com/dcl/title.php?id=452

Super Size Me (2005. 100 minutes) - Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock makes himself a test subject of this documentary about the commercial food industry. Rigorously eating a diet of McDonald's fast food, three times a day for a month straight. Spurlock is out to prove the physical and mental effects of consuming fast food. While doing this, Spurlock also provides a look at the food culture in America through it's schools, corporations, and politics as seen through the eyes of regular people and health advocates. "Super Size Me" is a movie that sheds a new light on what has become one of our nation's biggest health problems: obesity. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/

Sustainable Agriculture and Food Film List (some at Tufts Media Library)

Sustainable Table (2006. 52 minutes) - Takes an unadulterated look into the food you eat. What's on your place? Where does it come from? What effects does it have on the environment and your body? What can you do to help? www.sustainabletablemovie.com/

Truck Farm (out January 2010?) - When Fayett Plumb gave his grandson the keys to his 86’ Dodge pickup, he wasn’t expecting the old half-ton to come back as a farm. Using green-roof technology, lightweight soil and heirloom seeds, American filmmakers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis have turned grandpa’s old truck into a traveling twelve-share Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project farm. www.greenmuze.com/nurture/urban/1363-the-truck-farm-project.html

We Feed the World (2005. 96 minutes) - Vividly reveals the dysfunctionality of the industrialized world food system and shows what world hunger has to do with us. Includes interviews with fishermen, farmers and drivers, as well as Jean Ziegler of the UN, Karl Otrok of seed manufacturer Pioneer, and Peter Brabeck of Nestle International. www.we-feed-the- world.at/en/film.htm

What’s “Organic” About Organic? (?) - Shelley Rogers. The film illustrates that the organic food debate extends well beyond personal choice and into the realm of social responsibility. It delves into the debates that arise when a grassroots agricultural movement evolves into a booming international market. As the film moves from farm fields to government meetings to industry trade shows, we see the hidden costs of conventional agriculture. We also see how our health, the health of our planet, and the agricultural needs of our society are all intimately connected. www.whatsorganicmovie.org/

What Will We Eat? (2006. 26 minutes) - Tells the story of the growing failure of the industrial food system and how a grassroots coalition of small farmers and consumers is inventing a healthy, humane, homegrown alternative. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwxg6xOSvJU www.chrisbedfordfilms.com/recent.htm