This is the epic tale of a maverick midwestern farmer. An outcast in his community, Farmer John bravely stands amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and violence.  By melding the traditions of family farming with the power of art and free expression, this powerful story of transformation and renewal heralds a resurrection of farming in America.

The film is a haunting odyssey, capturing what it means to be different in rural America. Director Taggart Siegel made the film by shooting farmer John over 25 years of their evolving friendship, and using multiple media that allowed him to capture his alternately humorous, heartbreaking, and spirited life with raw drama and intimacy.  With the death of his father during the late 60s, a teenaged John takes over the traditional family farm, slowly turning it into an experiment of art and agriculture, making it a haven for hippies, radicals and artists.  But this idealistic era ends as the farm debt crisis of the 80’s brings about the tragic collapse of the farm.  As the intricate weave of rural America unravels, vicious local rumors turn John into a scapegoat, condemning him as a Satan-worshipping drug-dealer. Threatened with murder, his home burned to the ground, John forsakes his farm and wanders through Mexico, where he is transformed by the soulfulness and pageantry of this ancient land. Mysteriously, his quest leads him back to his hostile homeland.  Defying all odds, he gradually transforms his land into a revolutionary farming community, a cultural mecca, where people work and flourish providing fresh vegetables and herbs to thousands of people every week.  The Peterson family farm has become Angelic Organics, one of the largest Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in the United States, a beacon of today’s booming organic farming movement.

www.angelicorganics.com

This alarming documentary is the humorous and touching story of two best friends who decide to move to Iowa to grow an acre of corn ─ after finding out (through laboratory hair analysis) that their bodies were made primarily out of… corn.  The film traces a year in the life of two friends, but it's really about the history of corn in modern America and the filmmakers’ relationship with this pivotal crop of agribusiness.  Americans are so “corny” because almost every product in conventional grocery stores ─ from steaks to chicken breasts to condiments to desserts to tomato sauce to frozen entrees to hamburgers to aspirin to soft drinks to baby formula to vegetable oil to vegetable broth to cereal to cold cuts to ice cream to toothpaste to disposable diapers to  vitamins (the list goes on) are ultimately derived from corn, either in the form of high fructose corn syrup or from corn-based animal feed.  The filmmakers visit cattle feedlots which hold thousands of animals dining on corn-based feed and learn that too much corn causes the cattle to eventually develop an acidic condition in one of their stomachs (acidosis) that eventually kills them.  The filmmakers trace the history of corn subsidies in the U.S.  The current system started only about 30 years ago when the Farm Bill was changed and the emphasis was put on industrial-style monocropping.  Agribusiness is the ruin of the world ─ see it close up for yourself.

www.kingcorn.net

This famous documentary tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology.  Compelling, intelligent, and highly entertaining, the film visits with the world’s top experts and comes to a startling, but logical conclusion ─ our industrial society, built on cheap and readily available oil, must be completely re-imagined and overhauled.  The idea that the world’s oil supplies have peaked, or will soon, is gaining mainstream currency.  The Age of Oil ─ 100-plus years of astonishing economic growth made possible by cheap, abundant oil ─ could be ending without our really being aware of it.  Oil is a finite commodity.

You needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to see a connection between America’s current obsessions with the Middle East, national security, and the world’s looming oil crisis.  The frenzied search for alternative sources of energy now being pursued by the largest multinational energy corporations makes it clear they also believe a crisis is fast approaching.  Oil is running out, and nobody is ready for the cataclysm that is bound to follow.  Shot on location at oil fields in Azerbaijan, Venezuela, the Middle East, and Texas, with original music by Daniel Schnyder and Philip Glass, this important film provides not only questions, but possible solutions to the most perplexing and important economic, environmental, and public policy issue of our time.  Some years ago a government report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy under Robert L. Hirsch challenged the notion that the free market can solve the onrushing emergency:  "The world has never faced a problem like Peak Oil. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary."

www.oilcrashmovie.com/film.html