Hundreds of people are expected tonight and tomorrow at Minneapolis screenings of a new movie called “Fresh.” It’s the first of a string of movies due for release this summer about food, and the debate over its place in our lives.

Read the rest below the fold, or on the Minnesota Public Radio website.

St. Paul, Minn. — Michael Pollan has been advocating a re-examination of our food system for years in his books such as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.” But he said things are about to move to another level – or at least the local movie house with a slew of films.

Some of the films listed by Pollan were “Food Incorporated” which is coming out in June, “Fresh” which is about the foods system, and “Nourish” which is going to be on public television in the fall. Pollan said he thinks that these films are going to expand the conversation quite a bit.

Kasper and Pollan

So why all this interest in food all of a sudden? Filmmaker Ana Joanes thinks there are many reasons.

“Food is incredibly intimate,” Joanes said. “I mean some of our strongest childhood memories are about food. It’s so much part of our culture and family life.”

The New York-based filmmaker directed “Fresh,” which is being screened tonight at the Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis and then across town tomorrow at the Riverview Theatre. “Fresh” is the result of two years of work, talking to advocates from the real food movement. Joanes said industrialized food production poses a threat to food safety and community health.

“I mean my business is up significantly over last year.There’s not a lot of restaurants can say that and I think it’s a testament to the interest in local foods and people paying attention to what they are eating.”

- Tracy Singleton

“We have an obesity crisis. We have a diabetes crisis,” she said. “Apparently one in three children are going to develop type II diabetes and in some communities it’s one in two children.”

Joanes said food has become a social justice issue. Her film features Will Allen, a former pro basketball player who now runs a farm in the middle of Milwaukee. In the film Allen states his goals. “That everybody has access to healthy sustainable food, that we don’t say that only rich people can afford it,” he says.

Fresh is being screened in the Twin Cities at least in part because of Allen. He runs seminars as part of his operation. Tracy Singleton, owner of the the Birchwood Cafe in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis, heard him speak. She was so inspired she is sponsoring the screenings at the Riverview. She said it fits right in with her restaurant’s mission.

“Our tagline for the Birchwood is good real food,” Singleton said.

The Birchwood works with local organic farmers and cooks all its food from scratch. Singleton said she does it because she believes the food is better, and wants to build a sense of connection between the people who supply her cafe and the people who eat there. She said it’s clear the community wants it too, even in the economic downturn.

“I mean my business is up significantly over last year,” she said. “There’s not a lot of restaurants can say that and I think it’s a testament to the interest in local foods and people paying attention to what they are eating.”

Will Allen

Singleton has been running the Birchwood for almost a decade and a half, and she says all the people in the local food movement are reporting real change going on around them.

“Where the sentiment and the movement and the energy is at now in the Twin Cities, I think a movie like this could be a real jumping off point to the next level,” she said.

Singleton admits the food issue is actually so complicated she’s not sure what that next level would look like.

Splendid Table host Lynne Rossetto Kasper said while there’s always been a cyclical interest in food films, the times do seem to be creating extra interest at present.

“Food’s always political” Kasper said. “It always has been political.”

Kasper said that’s particularly true with the bad economy.

“All of our antennae are up right now,” she said. “Money is of prime concern, security is a prime concern, we no longer trust our government, we no longer feel protected in terms of the safety of our food.”

But Kasper said people should understand there was never a time when food was entirely safe.

Kasper said she hopes the films will encourage a true debate about an immense subject involving everything from culinary custom to agricultural policy.

“I think there will be a dialogue,” she said. “I want to see it encouraged though. I want to hear from the people who believe those pesticides and those fertilizers are necessary. Whether or not you believe in it is one thing. But understanding it is another. There was a time when those pesticides and fertilizers were the greatest blessing those farmers ever had.”

That discussion may begin tonight and tomorrow with the panel discussions after the screenings of “Fresh.”

And if documentaries aren’t your thing consider the much anticipated “Julie and Julia.” It’s got Meryl Streep playing Julia Child in a film about the young woman who tried to cook every recipe in one of Child’s books in a year.

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The front yard farming phenomenon is so hot now that People magazine recently did a story on it, “From Lawn to Lunch.” But when Michelle Obama tore up a patch of the White House lawn to plant a kitchen garden, she inadvertently fertilized another growing movement: a flourishing Agribiz campaign to portray kitchen gardeners and ‘good food movement’ advocates as dangerous zealots out to shove fresh, untainted, ie. aggressively wholesome foods down America’s collective throat and force us all to grow our own veggies–all without benefit of pesticides or chemicals.

Read the rest at Huffington Post or scroll down to read the whole interview here.

The front yard farming phenomenon is so hot now that People magazine recently did a story on it, “From Lawn to Lunch.” But when Michelle Obama tore up a patch of the White House lawn to plant a kitchen garden, she inadvertently fertilized another growing movement: a flourishing Agribiz campaign to portray kitchen gardeners and ‘good food movement’ advocates as dangerous zealots out to shove fresh, untainted, ie. aggressively wholesome foods down America’s collective throat and force us all to grow our own veggies–all without benefit of pesticides or chemicals.

Why? Because the rising influence of folks like Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, and other high profile “food cops,” to quote the uber-astroturf (i.e. fake grassroots) Center For Consumer Freedom, is bad for Agribiz’s bottom line. The more people know about how our food’s grown and produced, the more likely they are to demand better, healthier–i.e. less profitable–food.

And now, Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, and their Big Food buddies have to contend with a whole flurry of food documentaries that reveal just how screwed up our food chain’s become over the past half-century. On June 12th, Participant Media will release Food, Inc., which they hope will be the “Inconvenient Truth” of our food system.

Monsanto, not surprisingly, is one of the villains in Food, Inc., so it’s launched a pr offensive dismissing the documentary as pure propaganda that “demonizes American farmers.” The only problem with this line of attack is that it’s blatantly false, and there’s no better proof of that than another outstanding food documentary, FRESH, which premieres this week in New York, Boston and DC. As FRESH director Ana Joanes says, her film “celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system.”

Food, Inc. and FRESH both feature Joel Salatin, the Virginia farmer profiled in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Pollan himself appears in both films as well. But despite the apparent overlap, the two films are very different.

Each provides a much-needed public service, but where Food, Inc. airs a laundry list of factory farming’s dirty secrets, Fresh makes a beeline past the manure lagoons, veal crates, contaminated food and monoculture madness to land us in truly greener pastures, whether it’s in rural Virginia with Salatin or in urban Milwaukee at McArthur genius Will Allen’s farm, Growing Power.

I’ve been excited about FRESH ever since my colleague Kate Croft, one of the prime movers and shakers behind New York University’s Sustainability Task Force and a consultant/blogger (as am I) for the Eat Well Guide, told me about it a couple of months ago, and introduced me to Ana.

Ana grew up in Switzerland, but she’s been living in the U.S. for more than 15 years. Her interest in the cultural and environmental impact of globalization drew her here to earn her BA in political science from Barnard college, followed by a degree from Columbia Law School. Before dedicating herself to film making, Ana founded Reel Youth, Inc., a video production program for youth coming out of detention, and other under-served youth.

Now, after making FRESH, she’s become, like myself, a kind of accidental sustainable agtivist:

KT: Fresh is an essential companion piece to Food, Inc., but while both films expose the fundamental flaws in our food chain, your documentary focuses on folks who are committed to sustainable food production, whereas Food, Inc.’s primary purpose is to expose the horrors of Agribiz. At what point during the filming of Fresh did you become aware of Food, Inc.? And did it affect your decisions as a director?

AJ: Robert Kenner, the director of Food, Inc., contacted me sometime during the fall of 2007. Robbie had gotten my info from Joel when he was filming there (at Polyface Farm). We talked for a long time and have been in touch since. Learning about Food, Inc. did not affect any of my decisions, besides perhaps some strategical concerns with regard to a release date. But the structure and focus of my movie was in no way influenced by my conversation with Robert. Also, I only got to see his movie recently and so did not really know so much what to expect (although I knew our movies would be very different.)

KT: You first started working on Fresh in late 2005, before Omnivore’s Dilemma came out, “locavore” entered the lexicon, and Wal-Mart became the nation’s leading seller of “organic” milk. Did you sense back then that you were documenting a growing movement?

AJ: yes. When I started thinking about making this documentary, my focus was much broader. I thought to look at people and initiatives not only in farming but energy, architecture, technology, etc., and although I was finding out about amazing people and stories through my research, it became clear, almost from the start, that what was going on at the food level was the most exciting.

One thing in particular struck me: I was finding programs, initiatives, people ALL OVER the world, in apparently completely different environmental, cultural, and political environments, and yet they all shared key attributes: they all had a grassroots, bottom-up quality, as well as an incredibly integrated approach to the work they were doing.

“Yes, it’s about food,” these initiatives seemed to say, “but it’s really about education, health, quality of work, environmental preservation, our spiritual well-being…” Food, I started to realize, was both a microcosm of the problems (economic consolidation, environmental destruction, exploitation of workers, oil crisis, etc.) and of the solutions. And because food plays such an intimate and immediate role in our everyday lives, it’s a powerful entry point to discuss and address these challenges.

Food is a central part of our social and cultural fabric and we can instantly observe the consequences when we change our eating habits–not only in our pleasure and health, but on the vitality of our local economy, on our community and environment.

KT: You grew up in Switzerland and came to the U.S. as a student. There’s a perception, validated by recent studies, that Europeans and Americans have very different eating habits. Did you notice this when you first arrived in the U.S.?

AJ: I think that what I noticed the most was how I missed the fresh products I grew up taking for granted. Tomatoes that actually have taste. Great salads. Yogurt and cheeses (it’s much easier now to get great yogurt and cheese than it was when I first got here.) And being in New York, it didn’t take long before I found myself eating all my meals out. It’s hard to resist the “convenience” ethos that’s so pervasive in New York and perhaps around the country.

I also came to realize that the price of food was much cheaper in the US, at least compared to Switzerland. Not only are restaurants very expensive back home–and therefore a much less regular occurrence–but food purchased at the supermarket is expensive, as well. People back home don’t have the expectation that food should be cheap, so they spend a much larger portion of their income on food. Also, although we have amazing farmers’ markets, the quality of food in the supermarket was always great and I never had to think about where to go to buy food. In New York, depending on your neighborhood, the difference in quality can be dramatic.

KT: Do you find that your own relationship to food has changed since you made FRESH?

AJ: When I started making FRESH, my main relationship with food was one of dieting and guilt. I would choose food based on calories, mostly. I think I always had a fairly healthy diet, to the extent that I never ate much junk, and always enjoyed vegetables and fruits, but I never thought of the quality of the meat, vegetables, or fruits that I was eating, or the impact that it has on my health, my community, and the environment.

To be honest, it never really crossed my mind to think of the way that food was raised/produced, or to worry about it. It also never crossed my mind that the food I was eating might be contributing to my not feeling good, having low energy, gaining weight, and possibly to my long-term well-being.

As I started making the documentary, my food anxiety mostly increased: I was still mostly concerned about calories, but I also started wondering about the pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics that might be in the food I was eating. I started thinking of all the “health snacks” I was eating that contained GMOs and the unknown health risk attached to that food.

But my habits didn’t change much at first. The change happened slowly and with a general change in my outlook and lifestyle. It was as if my inquiry into our food system helped me realize not only our communal dysfunctions and misplaced priorities, but mine as well.

I started to try to find more balance in my life, to find or look for pleasure in daily activities, in the “process” of life, rather than constantly running after the next “thing” that was going to make me happier, better, more something or the other. Eating well was no longer about (or only about) improving my health or not gaining weight, it was about pleasure: taking care of myself and the folks that I love and taking the time to do so.

I also came to realize how important it was for me to align my actions with my heart and mind. I have always been concerned with the destruction of the environment and the exploitation of people. But I did not always align my actions with my belief. Once I started living a more aware/conscious life, I felt great pleasure and satisfaction in acting in ways that support my beliefs. It was not a sacrifice–which is how I had always thought about it–but a relief.

KT: You’re about to become a mother (congratulations!) Have you figured out how you’ll equip your child to cope with a culinary culture where cheap, fast and toxic is the norm and fresh, untainted produce is seen as a luxury for an elite few?

AJ: No, I have no idea. I mean, I’ll certainly feed him/her great food and hope to introduce him/her to the pleasures of gardening and cooking, and thereby influence his/her tastebuds for life. But I have no doubt my kid is going to get exposed to foods that will taste absolutely wonderful to him/her and that he/she will want more of them…and I have no idea how I’ll deal with that. I do think celebrating food and making shopping and cooking a joy, as well as the sharing around a table on a daily basis, will go a long way–at least I hope!

KT: What’s the most drastic change you’ve witnessed on the real food front in the years since you began this project? What gives you the greatest hope that we can really transform the way we eat and grow food in this country?

AJ: It seems to me that food has become a substantial focus for Americans. The mainstream news and cyberspace are filled with information and discussion ranging from concern about the latest food scare to a favorite recipe. This shift in American’s awareness is both dramatic and fills me with great hope.

The sustainable food movement is, in essence, a grassroots movement advocating for a change in awareness, a shift in our relationship with each other and with our environment, a new social and economic paradigm. Like any deep cultural change, it starts small and slowly grows, then accelerates as it reaches a critical mass. Michelle Obama’s garden is a reflection on how far and wide “real food” ideas have reached. More than a reflection, though, Michelle’s garden will be a catalyst for raising awareness even further, and is evidence of our government’s receptivity to the concerns and demands of sustainable food advocates.

It is this, and the amazing people that I encounter through my work, their energy and dedication, that keep me hopeful. Hopefulness is simply the knowledge that change is possible and that we can participate in it. Lin Yutang said that “Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”

]]> http://www.freshthemovie.com/2009/05/29/ana-joanes-interviewed-on-huffington-post/feed/ 3 http://www.freshthemovie.com/2009/05/25/firedoglake-movie-night-presents-fresh/ http://www.freshthemovie.com/2009/05/25/firedoglake-movie-night-presents-fresh/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 02:27:38 +0000 ana http://www.freshthemovie.com/?p=309 Ana Joanes chatted with FireDogLake readers & writers about the making of FRESH, what it means to her as a soon-to-be-mother and what we all can do to change the way America eats!  A few excerpts from the lively discussion are below, or click here to read the comments in full.

“I appreciated the emphasis on biodiversity and the discussion of the negative impact of monocultured plants and animals in Fresh..but I REALLY loved all the characters!”

“I hope all our readers interested in environmental and food issues take the time to watch it. It’s a great conversation starter on so many of the problems we face — and so many of the things that need to be tackled on a much larger scale, including the political influence involved in all of these things that makes change so difficult to achieve.
Thanks for the enormous amount of hard work that must have gone into this film.”

Full post & discussion can be read here.

Do you THINK about what your eat? If not, this movie will make you think twice about what you put in your mouth and where it comes from. Ana Sofia Joanes, director of Fresh, has made one of the most important movies I have seen in some time. Her film chronicles where our food comes from, how it affects our environment, animal life, and economy. She also features several well-know stars of sustainable agriculture including Michael Pollan, Will Allen, and Joel Salatin.

Listen to the entire interview here:

I’m six-months pregnant. And about to give birth to a movie, Fresh (I think the proper term is release.) I’m ready to let this baby out into the world, but I’m not so sure I’m ready for the other, the crying-pampers-changing- 24/7-for-the-next-20-years baby.

Making a movie might or might not be a good preparation for motherhood (filmmakers out there: comments, thoughts?) but Fresh sure changed the way I feed myself during pregnancy and how I’ll feed my baby. It’s changed the way I approach life.

Read the rest at Huffington Post, or go below the fold to read the whole piece here.Fresh — New Thinking About What We’re Eating
By ana Sofia joanes

I’m six-months pregnant. And about to give birth to a movie, Fresh (I think the proper term is release.) I’m ready to let this baby out into the world, but I’m not so sure I’m ready for the other, the crying-pampers-changing- 24/7-for-the-next-20-years baby.

Making a movie might or might not be a good preparation for motherhood (filmmakers out there: comments, thoughts?) butFresh sure changed the way I feed myself during pregnancy and how I’ll feed my baby. It’s changed the way I approach life.

Fresh examines the problems and consequences of our current food system, but its focus is on the farmers, thinkers, and business people across America who are coming up with alternatives. And, although, at first glance, it may seem that Fresh is about food and agriculture, it’s really more about adopting a new perspective, a different understanding of our relationship to each other and the world. In short, Fresh seeks to empower us by showing how we are the creators of our reality, not passive by-standers to a world going nuts. And while being creators means taking responsibility for what’s happening, it also means we can change it (yes we can!).

I fist started thinking about making Fresh after reading a three-part article in the New Yorker about global warming four years ago. I had been avoiding reading the series, the way I try really hard to ignore the news. I figured I knew about global warming, and didn’t want to feel scared and guilty about how little I did to combat it, or how much I contributed to the problem. The article’s dire exposé of the complexity and extent of the problems we’re facing left me feeling, like so much of the news, a powerless and hopeless observer, watching the world spiraling towards its inevitable destruction. And helplessness, for me at least, (almost always) translates into inaction.

So I embarked on the making of Fresh to recapture a sense of agency, a belief that my individual actions do in fact matter. Initially, I intended to document the urgency of the global warming crisis, hoping to scare others and myself into action. Instead, I encountered the most inspiring people, ideas, and initiatives. Who knew that we already had the solutions to so many of our problems, and that some of us were already hard at work implementing them? Instead of the despair and inaction unwittingly fostered by the media, these examples of change suggested a very different perspective, that life is an indivisible network in which every node is critical, that each one of us is creating the world we are living in, and that the process of creating it is what gives us meaning and pleasure.

Around the same time, I started meditating. And since I don’t do things slowly, I went on 8 or so week-long silent mediation retreats over the course of that same period. And my experience on the cushion helped me understand what it was that so deeply attracted me to the people I was discovering in my documentary. Our current culture tends to take a very linear approach to life. Everything has a start and an end, everything is disposable – my morning coffee “to-go”, my new living room set, my old TV. Buy and throw out. Collect and then dispose. Everything is expendable. And it sure feels, in times of plenty, that there’s no end to what we can get. Problem is, in a linear model, even our lives have become expendable. It’s hard to find meaning when it seems like you’re just another “thing” to be used and disposed of, and when the only folks that seem to matter are those with money and celebrity power bolstering them up; the Bill Gates and Bonos of the world.

When I visited Joel Salatin (a Virginia farmer made famous by Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore Dilemma,” and one of the main character in Fresh ), and he explained how everything has a place in nature, how nothing is wasted, I felt this combination of relief and excitement. In nature, bacteria, manure, fungus, trees, grass, sunlight, water… all play a part in the wonderful and mysterious process of creating and maintaining life. We might love to look at old solid oak trees and peaceful rivers, but no one could ever claim that they are more important to an ecosystem than the bacteria or the worms, the ants, and the birds. To realize that everything has its place, all play a role, was wonderfully reassuring.

And so, through the making of Fresh , and with the support of meditation, I began to look at myself differently, to ask different questions from myself and about my life. It is not only the pig whose pig-ness we need to respect, but the Ana-ness of Ana. The essence of each one of us. By learning to respect and embrace the truth of who I am, I too can find my place and role in this world. For me, right now, it means not doubting my work, but letting my first ‘baby’ out into the world, and trusting it will find its audience (well, a little trust and lots of work!) It also means being a friend, a partner, a daughter. It means acting with mindfulness in my daily life, knowing that my smallest actions have an impact and that they are no less important then the biggest of my decisions. It means taking care of myself, and of the life that I am carrying. It means allowing for room for mistakes, for feeling lost, for finding myself again, and again and again. Perhaps my role or place will never be so clear as that of each element in an ecosystem, or as predetermined, but it will be, and it will have an effect. Like it or not!

But the media is not even discussing any potential link . . . so check this “alternative” article by William Engdahl:
Flying Pigs, Tamiflu, and Factory Farms