King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In the film, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm.
See the King Corn website for more information
Media Collection Call Number: DVD 2947. Check the link to assure availability for check-out.
When Ian Cheney moved to New York City after making King Corn, a film about growing an acre of America’s most subsidized commodity crop, he wanted to grow something a little different. After all, he’d seen firsthand the problems associated with growing a crop like yellow dent #2 corn — the raw material for high fructose corn syrup, countless processed foods, and confined animal feeding operations. With America reeling from epidemics of obesity and diabetes, it was high time to try planting a garden of one’s own.
But where to do it? He didn’t own any land, all the community gardens were full, and the asphalt seemed to stretch on forever. Taking a good long look at the 1986 Dodge his grandfather Fayette Rumsey Plumb II had given him upon college graduation, Ian decided to give truck farming a whirl.
See the Truck Farm website for more information.
Episodes are available for streaming from Ian Cheney's YouTube page.
THE CITY DARK is a feature documentary film about light pollution and the disappearing night. After moving to New York City from rural Maine, filmmaker Ian Cheney asks a simple question, "Do we need the stars?" Blending a humorous tone with cutting-edge science and poetic footage of the night sky, Cheney unravels the myriad implications of a globe glittering with lights - including increased breast cancer rates, disrupted ecosystems, and a generation of kids without a glimpse of the universe above. Featuring astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, author Ann Druyan and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, THE CITY DARK is the definitive story of the earth's disappearing night sky.
See The City Dark website for more information.
Media Collection Call Number: DVD 4892 Check the link to assure availability for check-out.
THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO is a feature-length documentary tracing the origins of Chinese American food through what is arguably America’s most popular takeout meal––General Tso’s Chicken.
Anchoring the film is an upbeat quest, through small towns and big cities across America and beyond, to understand the origins and popularity of Chinese American food and its top-selling dish. Who was General Tso? And why do nearly fifty thousand restaurants serve deep-fried chicken bearing his name?
Using this Americanized dish and its mysterious mastermind as a lens onto a larger story of immigration, adaptation, and innovation, the film follows a lighthearted journey, grounded in cultural and culinary history, through restaurants, Chinatowns, and the American imagination. Visits to present-day Chinese restaurants spark forays into the past, guided by chefs, scholars, and the occasional opinionated customer. The film’s lively soundtrack and shadow-puppet animations contribute both whimsy and momentum, as viewers find they’re on a search to answer a deeper question: how did America’s Chinese food become so… American?
See The Search for General Tso website for more information.