Food and Country (2024)

The Business of Creativity

Going into my interview with Laurel Greenfield, I thought the majority of our conversation would be about her inspiration for painting food and why she chose to pursue painting as a career. We spoke about that but ended up having a much bigger conversation about pursuing a creative career. We talked a lot about finding the balance between having a business plan and taking a leap of faith into the unknown, something anyone pursuing a creative field on their own can relate to.

We're Here to Stay

Farm families in Lestock, Saskatchewan, have pooled their resources so that rising operating costs will not drive them off their land. By pooling their land, their equipment, their livestock, and farming as a cooperative, they are able to live as they choose, to maintain their standard of living, and even to have some spare time left over to enjoy. An engaging look at a novel approach to big-scale farming.

Kiss the Ground

Sheds light on an alternative approach to farming called “regenerative agriculture” that could balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world.

In Search of Balance

An exploration of a new paradigm of health, science, and medicine, based on the interconnections between us and nature.

King Corn

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

Sustainable Style

A look into the world of sustainable fashion with Emma Gorton-Elicott the owner of Fruit Salad, a Bristol based independent sustainable & slow fashion business. Emma discusses the difference between slow and sustainable fashion and what you can do to curate a sustainable wardrobe.

The Permaculture Orchard: Beyond Organic

This feature-length educational film teaches you how to set up your own permaculture orchard at virtually any scale. We recognize the limitations of the organic model as a substitute to conventional fruit growing, and want to propose a more holistic, regenerative approach based on permaculture principles. Based on 20 years of applied theory and trial and error, biologist and educator Stefan Sobkowiak shares his experience transforming a conventional apple orchard into an abundance of biodiversity that virtually takes care of itself. The concepts, techniques and tips presented in this film will help you with your own project, whether it is just a few fruit trees in your urban backyard, or a full-scale multi-acre commercial orchard.

The Times of Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

Sleep Furiously

Set in a small farming community in mid Wales, a place where Koppel's parents - both refugees - found a home. This is a landscape and population that is changing rapidly as small scale agriculture is disappearing and the generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out. Much influenced by his conversations with the writer Peter Handke, the film maker leads us on a poetic and profound journey into a world of endings and beginnings; a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire.

The Patent Scam

The corruption runs deeper than you'd ever imagine. A multi-billion dollar industry you've never heard of. This is the world Patent Trolls thrive in: A world created for them by our own U. S. Patent system. You can be sued for clicking on a hyperlink, using your own scanner, or sharing your Wi-Fi! It sounds insane, but the reality is even crazier. Patent Trolls look for obvious ideas, patent them, and then sue anyone they claim is infringing on their idea. People's lives and businesses are being destroyed.. and they have no way out. “The Patent Scam” exposes the underbelly of this system, and the people that commit this practice.

Dominion

Exposing the dark underbelly of modern animal agriculture through drones, hidden & handheld cameras, the feature-length film explores the morality and validity of our dominion over the animal kingdom.

Milk Men

As the global economics of dairy farming has winnowed out most small and medium-sized dairies, the surviving farmers confront pressures to intensify production, even as they find that getting bigger presents new problems.

Fresh

FRESH is more than a movie, it’s a gateway to action. Our aim is to help grow FRESH food, ideas, and become active participants in an exciting, vibrant, and fast-growing movement.

The Milk System

Milk is Big Business. Behind the innocent appearances of the white stuff lies a multi-billion euro industry, which perhaps isn't so innocent…

Legacy

Is there a mental health crisis in agriculture in Colorado? Farming and ranching has become increasingly difficult over the years. An industry that is typically viewed as romantic, hardworking, and "salt-of-the earth" is actually a job full of tremendous stress outside of anyone's control. Combine that with the enormous generational pressure to continue the family farm, and you have a large group of people that are suffering silently. How do we take care of those that are taking care of us?

Canada Vignettes: The Move

In this short documentary from the Canada Vignettes series, a Saskatchewan grain elevator is moved across the snow-covered prairie to a new home after nearly a half-century of use. The film follows the lifting and transporting of the 9-storey, 200-ton structure, and examines the feelings of the people as they witness the final passing of their town's one and only grain elevator.

Urine's Superpowers

That smelly, pale yellow liquid that people flush down the toilet every day is an industrial fertilizer, a diagnostic tool, a medicine, a renewable energy resource; it is an inexhaustible substance that is produced daily in huge quantities. This is the golden story of urine.

Ex-Rental

Surrounded by a rapidly-developing marketplace, local Western Australia video rental stores struggle to keep themselves afloat.

The Whisper of the Leaves

A poetic and contemplative journey of harmony between different forms of life that coexist on the earth. This film is a meditation on the effect of time, movement of the human spirit, and passage to new forms of life, through the eyes, ears, and bodies of three elderly land workers living in a small community in the outskirts of Bauta, Cuba.

On Her Own

Nancy Prebilich and her sister live with their parents on a farm that has been in their family for five generations. With the unexpected death of both parents, the sisters are left to keep this dying farm out of foreclosure amidst the many perils faced by America’s farmers.

The Ants and the Grasshopper

Anita Chitaya has a gift: she can help bring abundant food from dead soil, she can make men fight for gender equality, and maybe she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home in Malawi from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real. Traveling from Malawi to California to the White House, she meets climate sceptics and despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions that shape the USA: from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, and to the American exceptionalism that remains a part of the culture. It will take all her skill and experience to help Americans recognise, and free themselves from, a logic that is already destroying the Earth.

Agrarian Utopia

Facing seizure of their own lands, two families found themselves farming together on the same field, hoping to get through just another rice-farming season like every year. But no matter how much the world is evolving, how much the country is going through economic, political and social changes, they still cannot grasp that ideology of happiness.

La Ferme des Bertrand

1972 in Haute-Savoie (France) : the Bertrand's farm, with a hundred dairy cows owned by three bachelor brothers, is filmed for the first time. In 1997, they were the subject of Gilles Perret's first movie, as they let their farm to their nephew Patrick and his wife Hélène. Nowadays, 25 years later, Gilles Perret take another look at this farm, managed by Hélène who will step down. Through their words, an intimate, social and economic history of the rural world.

Die Bio-Revolution - Die Karriere der ökologischen Landwirtschaft

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Six Inches of Soil

The inspiring story of British farmers standing up against the industrial food system and transforming the way they produce food - to heal the soil, benefit our health and provide for local communities.

Seeds of Hope

A look at food security in the Hawaiian islands

From Seed to Seed

When Terry and Monique left the opera to pursue their true passion - ecological farming - their story of community and resilience took center stage. We follow their young family and a diverse group of farmers and scientists as they blend age old traditions with cutting edge science to develop improved methods for growing food ecologically and in a changing climate. A hopeful story and Canadian perspective on a global social movement that regenerates the land, farming and communities.

The Plow That Broke the Plains

A documentary about what happened to the Great Plains of the United States and Canada when uncontrolled farming destroyed the soil and led to the Dust Bowl.

Higher Grounds

Panama is reimagining coffee, and driving new standards for both quality and economics. Explores variety, farming practice, and processing innovation—notions traditionally associated only with winemaking. Through collaborative competition, Panamanian growers are banding together to raise the bar for coffee worldwide. Featuring interviews with award-winning coffee producers in Panama and global coffee celebrities, as well as stunning footage of Panama’s breathtaking highlands, Higher Grounds concludes with a hard look at the sustainability of specialty coffee, the implications for developing-region producers, and how Panama offers a model for the rest of the world.

Farmers For America

The average age of the U.S. farmer has reached 60. Half of America's farmland will change ownership in the next 15 years. Our nation faces a little-known agricultural crisis on an unprecedented scale. Against all odds, this is the story of an eclectic mix of young people- military veterans, bright-eyed idealists, and multi-generational farmers who are accepting the virtuous challenge of feeding us all. The documentary is narrated by Mike Rowe, Dirty Jobs, Returning the Favor and stars farmers from every region of the United States including national agricultural leaders like Joel Salatin, Eliot Coleman, Blake Hurst and Lindsey Lusher-Shute.

L'Amour vache

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Mysore

Two sides of Mysore: down to earth with the field workers and an Indian spectacle for the Maharaja.