Food Sustainability: Videos

Explores the indelible footprint that humans have left on this planet, and the catastrophic effects of environmental neglect and abuse, and calls for restorative action through a reshaping of human activity

A rich and inspiring documentary that takes us around the world to find the ordinary people taking action in the fight to save our environment. Narrated by award winner Tilda Swinton.

Inspired by a curiosity about society's careless habit of sending food straight to landfills, the multi award-winning documentary Dive! follows filmmaker Jeremy Seifert and friends as they dumpster dive in the back alleys and gated garbage receptacles of Los Angeles' supermarkets. In the process, they salvage thousands of dollars worth of good, edible food, resulting in an eye-opening documentary that is equal parts entertainment, guerilla journalism, and call to action.

The message of "Fuel" is clear: oil is bad, alternative energy is good. Its goals are simple: put Big Oil out of business, and sell the American public on the virtues of cleaner energy sources, such as wind, solar, and ethanol. Josh Tickell, an alternative-energy zealot, has both driven cross-country in a car powered only by fast-food cooking oil and written a book about it. His film is a combination of autobiography, first-person travelogue, history and ecology lesson, and a shamelessly inspirational call to action. Using charts, animated graphics and historical footage, Tickell ties our national obsession with oil to melting glaciers, melting economies, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, and the collapse of the American way of life. Eleven years in the making (a shorter version appeared in 2008 as "Fields of Fuel") the film is not so much a green documentary as a red, white, and blue alarm.

Host, Joshua Tickell; special appearances by, Richard Branson, Sheryl Crow, Larry & Laurie David, Deborah Dupre, John Paul DeJoria, Larry Hagman, Woddy Harrelson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Vinod Khosia, Naomi Klien, Willie Nelson, Scott Ritter, Julia Roberts, Michael Schmidt, Neil Young.

Colin Beavan is a New York City writer and self-proclaimed liberal. He has big plans for his new book. He decides on a grand experiment: to live one year with as little impact on the environment as possible. The problem is, the project requires his wife Michelle, an espresso-guzzling, Prada-worshipping business writer, and their young daughter to be fully on board. The family embarks on a year of no electricity, television, cars, toilet paper, elevators, or newspapers.

It is the Age of Plastic. It's cheap, practical, and everywhere. But is it dangerous? Viewers are taken on a journey around the globe, from the Moroccan Sahara to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, from a factory in China to the Alps to reveal the far-flung reaches of the plastic problem. Interviews with experts in biology, pharmacology, and genetics shed light on the perils of plastic to the environment and expose the truth of how plastic affects the body, and the health of future generations.

Wars of the future will be fought over water, as they are today over oil, as the source of all life enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling fresh water supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive. Past civilizations have collapsed from poor water management. Will ours too? Narrator, Malcolm McDowell.

http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com/

In a sleepy lagoon off the coast of Japan is a highly guarded secret. During the night, Taiji fishermen engage in an unseen hunt for thousands of dolphins. The work is so horrifying, the fishermen will stop at nothing to keep it hidden from the outside world. When a team of elite activists, filmmakers, and free-divers embark on a secret mission to penetrate their cover, the shocking discoveries they find there are just the tip of the iceberg.

[This film] charts the devastating ecological impact of overfishing by interweaving both local and global stories of sharply declining fish populations, including the imminent extinction of the bluefin tuna, and illuminates how our modern fishing capacities far outstrip the survival abilities of any ocean species. Scientists explain how this depletion has slipped under the public radar and outline the catastrophic future that awaits us -- an ocean without fish by 2048 -- if we do not adjust our fishing and consumption practices. Narrator, Ted Danson.

This videodisc focuses on climate change shown through time-lapse cameras set by internationally acclaimed photojournalist James Balog, who has placed equipment in more than two dozen glacial locations in the northern hemisphere in order to assess the impact of global warming on the cryosphere.

[A] transcendent global tour that explores the sights and sounds of the human condition like nothing you've ever seen or felt before. These are the wonders of a world without words, viewed through man and nature's own prisms of symmetry, savagery, chaos and harmony.

http://www.barakathefilm.com

Earth is an incredible, exceptional planet with an amazing life story full of cataclysmic disasters, eleventh-hour coincidences that save it from extinction, and an astonishing power to continually regenerate. This... series uses breathtaking footage and specialist imaging to tell the story of the great forces that shape the planet - volcanoes, the ocean, the atmosphere and ice. Traveling from Ethiopia's unique lava lake to an ice cave under a glacier in Greenland and a host of amazing locations in between, examine the forces that have helped create and foster life on Earth...

The award-winning true story of third-generation American farmer John Peterson's hero's journey of success, tribulation, failure and rebirth. He's not only a farmer, he's an artist too.

Vol. 1. episode 1: Invaders & episode 2: The one degree factor -- v. 2. episode 3: Predators & episode 4: Troubled waters -- v. 3. episode 5: Dangerous catch & episode 6: Dirty secrets.
Hosted by Edward Norton.

The American Dream of owning a house with white picket fence goes head-to-head with environmental sustainability... When an ambitious real estate developer sets out to transform thousands of acres of pristine hill country in Austin, Texas into a suburban development - threatening a nearby natural spring - the community fights back. In the conflict that ensues, we see in miniature a struggle that is playing out in cities and towns across the country.
Featuring interviews and commentary from Robert Redford and other environmental activists interested in preserving thousands of acres of pristine hill country in the Austin, Texas area; including opposing commentary from the the real estate developers.

A documentary film that "debunk[s] the conventional wisdom that oil production will continue to climb, and instead stare[s] bleakly at a planet facing economic meltdown and conflict over its most valuable resource.

http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/

Explains how United States government policy has contributed to a gap between what scientists know about global warming and what the general public understands. Documents the efforts of journalists, environmentalists, and activists to close this gap and to motivate citizens and the government to take action.

Offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade. THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

Charts the escalating drama in Appalachia over the alarming increase in large mountaintop coal mines. These mammoth operations have covered 1200 miles of headwater streams with mining waste, demolished thousands of acres of hardwood forest, and flattened hundred of Appalachian mountain peaks. Citizen testimony and visual documentation interwoven with the perspectives of government officials, activists, and scientists create a riveting portrait of an American region fighting for its life - caught between the grinding wheels of the national appetite for cheap energy and an enduring sense of Appalachian culture, pride, and natural beauty.
Narrator, Lauren Graham

http://www.blackdiamondsmovie.com/index.html

Globalization of world trade seems inevitable, but could lessons learned from fair trade price certification of timber, by the Forest Stewardship Council, and coffee, by Fair Trade, be applied to other products from developing countries?

Taking off where the documentary Affluenza ends, this television production shows ways individuals are combating consumerism and 'affluenza', including the voluntary simplicity movement. Hosted by Wanda Urbanska, co-author of Simple living.

This documentary profiles people who are living with the grave consequences of a changing climate, as well as the individuals, communities and scientists inventing new approaches to safeguard our children's future. Filmed across the U.S., Asia and South America, this program brings the reality of climate change to life and offers viewers a variety of ways to make a difference in their own communities.
Hosted and narrated by Alanis Morissette.

A primer on alternative energy sources & energy conservation. Also discusses how individuals can lead more energy-sustainable lifestyles.
Hosted & narrated by Cameron Diaz.

http://www.powershiftnow.org/

The survival of communities is threatened when big business buys the water supply in the third world. This is a look at how water is becoming the catalyst for community resistance to globalization, and at the conflict between public stewardship and private profit.

Using archival footage interspersed with interviews with farmers, scientists, government officials and activists, this video presents an overview of the American food production system and explores the unintentional effects of pesticides, the resistance of biotechnology companies to food labeling and the links between government officials and major biotechnology and chemical companies. It addresses many questions regarding genetic engineering, the Green Revolution, genetic pollution and modern pesticides.

Assesses the state of the environment. Combining interviews with leading scientists and reports from Mongolia, British Columbia, Brazil, South Africa, and the state of Kansas, Moyers and his team of award-winning producers explore the impact that human activities have on the planet while posing an urgent question: What is happening to the Earth's capacity to support nature and civilization?