Films about food
57:53As the biotechnology industry spends more than $50 million a year to convince us that ‘genetic technology’ is our only hope for feeding the world and saving the environment, toxic agricultural chemicals continue to poison the air, food and water and put farm workers in serious danger. So what’s the real problem? Using archive footage and interviews with farmers, scientists, government officials and activists, Fed Up With Genetic Engineering presents an overview of the current food production system, exploring the impacts of pesticides, the resistance of biotechnology companies to food labelling and the links between government officials and major biotechnology and chemical companies…
48:38A Farm For The Future follows wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking as she investigates how to transform her family’s farm in Devon, England, into a low energy farm with future peak energy concerns considered. With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to the farm to become the next generation to work the land, and the journey begins as she realises that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on cheap, abundant fossil fuel, particularly oil. After setting out to discover just how ‘secure’ the oil supply is and being alarmed by the answers, Rebecca is motivated to explore ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, A Farm For The Future shows that it is actually a return to nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.
1:12:54“Permaculture is a practical approach to the problems facing modern society, based on a philosophy of ‘think global, act local’. This video documents the transformation of a bare suburban house in Perth, showing practical examples from start to finish of how to grow organic food sustainably, how to reduce and incorporate household waste, evaluate energy consumption, and recreate habitat for other life.”
1:39:05Several lawsuits have been brought against McDonald’s corporation in that they are knowingly selling food that is unhealthy. Some of the court decisions have stated that consumers would have a claim if they could prove that eating the food every day for every meal is dangerous. So with that, Super Size Me follows film-maker Morgan Spurlock conducting the experiment — he eats only McDonald’s for thirty days, three meals a day, and if asked to super size a meal, he has to say yes. By the end of the thirty days, he will have eaten every single menu item at least once. The film documents the drastic effect on Spurlock’s health, while exploring the fast food industry’s corporate influence, advertising and how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit…
48:56Deep Trouble covers the concerns of commercial fishing from a global perspective. Many species of fish that are eaten every day all around the world are now seriously threatened or are critically endangered. The Southern Bluefin Tuna for one. Mainstream awareness of where market fish come from let alone how endangered they might be is minimal. As fish stocks dry up, supermarkets are now offering new and strange species from the deep sea. Bizarre-looking creatures are being dragged up in vast fishing nets from depths of 1,000 metres or more, and the methods used to catch them are horrifying. How sustainable is this?
59:50The controversies of corporations owning DNA, enforcing patents on living species, and pushing Genetically Modified seeds and crops across the globe, come together in Life Running Out Of Control. The battle between corporations and farmers is central to the film, with rapacious corporations such as Monsanto making claims that they are “improving upon nature,” only to be met with fierce opposition from farmers, activists and local communities that show this is not the case. The film also explores the issues of the loss of biodiversity, to health concerns about Genetically Modified food, to the effects of GMOs in the environment.
25:30Founded in 1976, the United States Office of Multilateral Diplomacy—known informally as the Zap Office—was created by Henry Kissinger to try and influence the voting patterns of third world nations at the United Nations by withholding food aid to those who did not vote alongside the United States. Zap! The Weapon Is Food is an investigation of this policy, one that makes food more powerful than oil…
27:01John Pilger travels to Bangladesh to report on the horrors of the famine in the country, its causes and tragedies, circa 1975. With people passing away on the street on a daily basis from starvation and US foreign policy continually ignored, An Unfashionable Tragedy documents the plight that continues to this day, showing that food is a powerful weapon, more powerful than oil…
23:46Coca Or Death delves into Bolivia — a country torn apart by the demands of the western world for coca. This film investigates why bloody battles have broken out between farmers and armed troops on the streets of La Paz, and what the impact of privatisation is having through the country. Coca has become a symbol of national resistance in Bolivia…
49:43Permaculture In Practice shows how the design of ecologically sustainable ways of living can be practised in four very different settings around the UK: A Hampshire back garden including fruit trees, vegetables, bees, chickens and ducks; in the city at Bradford close to a housing estate with 10,000 residents; a community co-op in Devon, which involves a café, allotments and local composting scheme; and a small farm in the Forest of Dean where local distribution schemes ensure a close link between grower and eater, including meat production, a vegetable box scheme and locally produced charcoal.
1:18:57Introduction To Permaculture provides an overview of some practical examples of permaculture design, while following the interwoven themes of ethics, community, planning and ecology. The film follows Geoff Lawton who is a permaculture consultant, designer and teacher in Australia and throughout the world, demonstrating some of the possibilities of permaculture design and how it can transform the way we eat and live…
51:08Pig Business investigates the rise of factory farming, a system which abuses animals, pollutes the environment, threatens human health through dangerous overuse of antibiotics and destroys rural communities. The film shows how this system which was developed in the United States and is now being used in eastern Europe from where the pork, often produced below legal animal welfare standards, is exported to other EU countries putting local farmers out of business…
44:51“Supermarkets have bulked up. These days they’re retail superpowers who make money not just when we eat or drink but increasingly when we fill the petrol tank, play pokies or buy a hammer from the local hardware – and they’re quietly stalking pharmacies, newsagents and florists. Coles and Woolworth’s sell 70 percent of the dry groceries and half the fresh food that Australians consume – among the highest concentrations of market power in the developed world”…
36:33Greening The Desert follows permaculturalist Geoff Lawton and his team to the Jordan desert where they transform 10 acres of the arid desert into a lush, thriving, food producing garden. In a massive transformation, the team develops a system to harvest rainwater, creates swells with over a foot of mulch and designs the system to reduce salt levels in the soil dramatically—only a few miles from the Dead Sea.
1:28:02Not only with climate change and the inherent destructiveness of agriculture compounding the current ecological crisis and the need to systemically change things, Seeds of Permaculture follows a group of westerners that travel to Thailand to experience, explore, learn and teach about permaculture systems as a means to try and step out of their way of life and reconnect with cultures past-and-present about traditional knowledge pertaining to food and the land. With education and inspiration as the main thread, the film follows the westerners as they learn about composting, solar heating, food forests, composting toilets, natural building, and earthen ovens. The goal is to empower and excite you, the viewer, about the possibilities of listening and reconnecting with the land where you live.
1:46:41Lucent is a grim accounting of the realities of factory farming in Australia. Documented are some of the conditions and day-to-day operations of industrial meat production—from farrowing crates or cages, to artificial insemination, to so-called free range; and of course, to mechanistic slaughter devoid of exchange. The film focuses mainly on pigs but also briefly looks at the issues facing other animals raised and killed for food in industrial conditions.
1:28:01Leviathan is an immerse film documenting the toll that commercial fishing continues to take on the life of the ocean. The message is explicit in the imagery of the film, which largely avoids exposition and context; goes on without narration, unfolding largely in the dark of night. Attesting to the power of estrangement and visceral imagery, Heavy-metal music coincides with heavy machinery, grinding gears and chains, to also similarly portray the repetitive hard-work of trawling life, against the collapse of ocean-life.
1:32:29Is the human population going to outstrip the Earth’s food supply? The effects of modern agriculture not only lead to a short term food surplus which quickly slipped as population boomed, but agriculture itself causes huge environmental problems such as soil erosion, salinity and chemical pollution—all further illustrating an impossible system in perpetuity. Food or Famine looks at projects in North America, Chile, Indonesia, Africa and India which are participating in a worldwide movement to return to local food growing methods based on the land and healthy ecological principles. The film also examines the worldwide imbalance between food consumption and production, stoking the need to confront the mounting challenges ahead…
1:30:07King Corn follows two college friends curious about the food system, as they decide to have a shot at farming an acre of corn. In the process, the two examine the role that the increasing production of corn has had across not only on the concepts of industrial food, but the health of the land, the health of the environment, and the health of people. The film spotlights the role of government subsidies which make huge monocrops of corn possible, which itself has—as industrial agriculture—a catastrophic ecological impact, but in-turn drives factory-farming of animals and other atrocities such as the production of high-fructose corn syrup which is saturated throughout industrial food, not least, fast-food. We see how this industrialisation has eliminated the family farm and local food production—things which are increasingly impossible in this brutal arrangement of corporate power.
1:27:10Bananas!* documents the legal battle of banana plantation workers in Nicaragua against the Dole Food Company over cases of sterility caused by the pesticide DBCP. The chemical, despite being banned, was knowingly sprayed on crops and workers. The result is the same old battle with corporate power as the film unpacks the issues of the case and the lives of the workers through the local lawyer Juan Dominguez. Dominguez bridges the gap between the rapacious North American company and the South American workers who were not told about or protected from the pesticide, to make a claim against one of the largest corporations in the world for justice for its workers.
54:27In the past 40 years, global consumption of fish has doubled. Having decimated natural fish populations globally, the industrial food system has turned to mass-scale farming practices in order to sustain the unsustainable, supplying huge supermarket chains and commercial food outlets with cheap processed fish products. What do we know about this and these processes? And what of the lives of the fish? What about their health and the health of the waters in which they’re taken? Fillet-Oh!-Fish is the result of yet another indictment of the industrial food system, agriculture and factory farming—all of which have egregious implications to the health and well-being of species, and the planet as a whole. We see myriad mixes of pesticides and other chemicals, leading to toxic rivers and streams, the pervasiveness of the industrial food system, with glimpses into working conditions and processing methods, as well as the perniciousness of globalisation, with the world-wide reach of this crazy system that has hijacked a fundamental life-giver: food.