In Defense of Food

Showings

Throckmorton Theatre Sat, Oct 10, 2015 4:45 PM
Lark Theatre Fri, Oct 16, 2015 11:45 AM
Film Info
Section:Valley of the Docs
Active Cinema
Country:US
Year:2015
Running Time:117 min
Premiere Status:World
Director:Michael Schwarz
Producer:Michael Schwarz
Edward Gray
Kiki Kapany
Screenwriter:Edward Gray
Cinematographer:Vicente Franco
John Chater
Editor:Rhonda Collins
Gail Huddleson
Print Source:Kikim Media
Note Writer:Peter L. Stein

Description

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” With that seven-word maxim, Berkeley-based journalist and healthy-planet advocate Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) distills a career’s worth of reporting into a prescription for reversing the human and environmental ills of our unsustainable Western diet. In Michael Schwarz’s illuminating, thoughtful documentary, Pollan travels the globe and the supermarket aisles to illustrate the principles of his best-selling “eater’s manifesto.” With the critical eye of a science journalist, but the warmth of a weekend baker, Pollan steers us through millennia of human evolution, the rise of industrial food production and marketing, and the competing claims of nutrition science that have resulted not only in a revolving door of nutrient villains (fats, protein, sugar, gluten) but also a confused—and obese—nation. In Defense of Food comes as a welcome, jargon-free guide to the food-perplexed, as refreshing as a summer salad (grilled chicken optional).

Sponsored by:


Co-presented by EatDrinkFilms.com, Center for Vulnerable Populations at General Hospital, and Youth Speaks

Additional Information

Michael Schwarz founded Kikim Media with his wife Kiki Kapany in 1996. His work has won numerous broadcasting award including three Emmys, two George Foster Peabody Awards, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award, and the Grand Prize in the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for Coverage of the Disadvantaged. In addition to In Defense of Food, Schwarz is also currently directing The Valley, a three-hour cultural, intellectual, and technological history of Silicon Valley; and The Ornament of the World, a two-hour history of medieval Spain. Other recent projects include: The Botany of Desire (2009), based on Michael Pollan’s book about the relationship between plants and people; Extreme by Design (2013), a film about students building a better world, one product at a time; My Father, My Brother and Me (Frontline, 2009), a chronicle of Parkinson’s disease; and Hunting the Hidden Dimension (Nova, 2008), the story of fractal geometry. As a Fulbright Fellow in the 1980s, Schwarz conducted documentary production workshops in Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.