Our World, Our Planet: From Corn to Consumption
5 Fridays, October 30th – December 11th
Films begin at 7pm
World Centric Community Space Wheelchair Accessible
2121 Staunton Court, Palo Alto, CA 94306
Tel: 650-283-3797
Donations requested to cover cost of films and speakers.
Films to be followed by speaker, discussion, and socializing
Seating capacity is about 70 people.
Please feel free to bring food/drinks to share and a cushion as there are a few metal chairs.
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Speaker: Wolfram Alderson, director of Collective Roots, bio here.
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, 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. (88 mins, 2007)
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Speakers: Annette Puskarich, Zero Waste Coordinator, City of Palo Alto
Phil Bobel, Environmental Compliance Manager, City of Palo Alto
Filmmaker Ian Connacher conducts an international odyssey revealing the disturbing long-term effects of the most ubiquitous and versatile material ever invented. From water bottles and Styrofoam cups to toothbrushes and garbage bags, in less than a century the pervasive presence of plastics has marked every ecosystem and all aspects of human activity. Visually compelling, entertaining and thought provoking, ADDICTED TO PLASTIC is both a wake-up call and an inspiring consideration of possible recycling or down-cycling solutions. (85 mins, 2009)
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Short prelude by Matt Harnack
We rarely think about what happens to all the stuff that we use then throw away. Where does it go? Or better yet, how can it be used again? This film includes three short interwoven portraits that show the, politics, economics, and creativity of reusing. Paul Cesewski creates interactive sculptures from material scavenged at the San Francisco Recycling Center, Katiyana Williams decided she's not going to buy anything new as this year’s resolution, and Roy and Carol Nordman own and operate an antique store that specializes in clock restoration. (7 mins, 2009)
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Speaker: Santa Clara Valley Water District
Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis. Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale. Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround. (93 mins, 2008)
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Speaker: Drew Harwell, local urban farmer and Demonstration Garden Manager for Common Ground
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, FOOD, INC. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here. (94 mins, 2009)
December 11th: Eco-Flicks for 350.org Candlelight Vigil
Speaker: Matt Harnack, eco-documentary film-maker, Grass Fed Films
Matt Harnack was determined to break his addiction to oil. Even though it was hard to imagine life without fossil fuel, it was far worse to think about what could happen if it keeps being burnt recklessly. So, to solve the problem of peak oil and global warming, Matt did the only thing he knew how to do. He made a movie.
