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Check Out My Article About Food, Inc. at Documentary.org

By Shira | Jun 11, 09 02:44 PM

I had a chance to see a preview copy of the new documentary Food, Inc. and interview the Director, Robert Kenner. This is my first article for the International Documentary Association's blog, and I'm psyched to get a chance to write about a topic so close to my heart:

Here's an excerpt and you can read the full article online:
Change: It's What's for Dinner: 'Food, Inc.' Takes on Agribusiness

In a world dominated by corporations, it is no surprise that the American food system has been hijacked by the relentless drive for profit. Under the pretexts of affordability and convenience, modern industrialized agriculture has consistently ignored the unintended consequences of their "efficient" practices on our health and livelihoods, the environment and other species.

Equally implicated is the United States government, which simultaneously subsidizes and fails to adequately regulate the agriculture industrial complex. This reality, explored by Frederick Wiseman in his 1976 cinema vérité documentary Meat and more recently by Nikolaus Geyrhalter in the unnarrated montage film Unser täglich Brot (Our Daily Bread; 2005), is more explicitly tackled in Robert Kenner's Food, Inc., which opens June 12 in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and nationwide on June 19.

The issue of food and the many ways in which it affects our lives is an enormous one, and the film is a broad undertaking, exploring everything from the health impacts of ever ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup (one out of three Americans born today is expected to develop early-onset diabetes), to water and air pollution caused by intensive factory farming, to human rights violations perpetrated against undocumented workers by mega corporations like Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer. Viewers are aided in processing all of this information by motion graphics created by Big Star NYC, which worked with Kenner to create an entertaining and helpful visual language for the film.

Ultimately, Food, Inc. is an examination of free market capitalism's disregard for anything other than the bottom line. "This is a film that's about more than food," says Kenner. "It's really about corporate consolidation and irresponsibility and about the relationship of these companies with government. It's not that different from what happened with the financial crisis. These companies have been totally irresponsible and at the end of the day, we're the ones who pay the price."

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