In many ways, the U.S. food system is rooted in exploitation, colonialism, environmental harms, and cultural erasure – and these injustices also take a toll on our planet and are connected to the work we do. The Center for Biological Diversity’s 2nd annual virtual Food Justice Film Festival takes place online Sept. 16–19 and features Truly Texas Mexican, The Ants & The Grasshopper, The Harvest/La Cosecha and SEED: The Untold Story. In addition to film screenings, we’re offering panel discussions with the filmmakers, farmers and activists. The event is free and open to the public.
How It Works
1. Create a free account at our film screening platform
(https://filmfestplus.com/films/?festival=FJ92VX2L75BN&emci=4c6d56d6-900a...)
Space is limited and festival access is available on first-come, first-served basis, so get your pass today.
(This is a different link than our festival website).
2. The festival takes place Sept. 16–19. All films will be available for you to stream at your convenience during this time. You do not need a passcode, just create a free account now and log in during the festival.
3. Pre-recorded panel discussions will be made available on our film festival website during the festival at FoodJusticeFilmFestival.com (This is different from the film festival screening/viewing platform.) (https://foodjusticefilmfestival.com)
Featured Films
Truly Texas Mexican: The Native American roots of Texas Mexican food serve up tacos, feminism and cultural resistance. Over time and during conquest, Texas Mexican food sustained Native American memory and identity. Cooking foods like nopalitos, deer, mesquite and tortillas, Indigenous women led the cultural resistance against colonization. Based on the award-winning book Truly Texas Mexican: A Native Culinary Heritage in Recipes.
The Ants & 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 she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real. It will take all her skill and experience to help Americans recognize, and free themselves from, a logic that’s already destroying the Earth.
The Harvest/La Cosecha: Every year more than 400,000 American children are torn away from their friends, schools and homes to pick the food we all eat. The Harvest/La Cosecha is “the story of the children who feed America.” It profiles three children as they journey from the scorching heat of Texas’ onion fields to the winter snows of the Michigan apple orchards and back south to the humidity of Florida’s tomato fields to follow the harvest.
SEED: The Untold Story: Few things on Earth are as miraculous and vital as seeds, worshipped and treasured since the dawn of humankind. SEED: The Untold Story follows passionate seed keepers protecting our 12,000-year-old food legacy. In the last century, 94% of our seed varieties have disappeared. As biotech chemical companies control the majority of our seeds, farmers, scientists, lawyers, and indigenous seed keepers fight a David-and-Goliath battle to defend the future of our food.
Panelists
Panel speakers include filmmaker and author Raj Patel and Malawi activists Anita Chitaya and Esther Lupafya (The Ants and The Grasshopper), filmmaker and chef Adán Medrano (Truly Texas Mexican), and former child laborer and migrant farmworker Zulema Lopez (The Harvest/ La Cosecha).
Watch trailers and learn more at our film festival website (https://foodjusticefilmfestival.com/)
Questions? Contact Center for Biological Diversity’s Senior Food Campaigner Jennifer Molidor at earthfriendlydiet@biologicaldiversity.org.
