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Category Archives: Farm & Food

Bitter Money

2016 ‧ Documentary ‧ 2h 43m

Migrants come to the city of East China looking for a better life, but instead find few opportunities and poor living conditions that create violence and oppression.

Initial release: September 9, 2016
Director: Wang Bing
Screenplay: Wang Bing
Cast: Ling Ling, Huang Lei
Awards: Orizzonti Award for Best Screenplay
Nominations: Orizzonti Award for Best Actor, Orizzonti Award for Best Actress

‘Bitter Money’ and ‘Bitter Rice’: Migrant Workers Face Toil and Trouble

 

System Error

2018 ‧ Documentary ‧ 1h 36m

“System Error” seeks answers to the great contradictions of our time and makes it clear why, despite everything, everything continues as before. The film shows the world from the perspective of people fascinated by the possibilities of capitalism. Whether European financial strategists, American hedge fund managers or Brazilian meat producers: They cannot, must not or do not even want to imagine a world without an expanding economy.

A humorous personal and essay film addressing architecture, habitation, space, density, xenophobia, gentrification and urban development. A power struggle between mountain peasants who have been raising milk cows on common land and a village bailiff trying to gain power driving them off the land.

Initial release: May 10, 2018 (Germany)
Director: Florian Opitz
Screenplay: Florian Opitz
Cinematography: Andy Lehmann
Producers: Florian Opitz, Jan Krüger

WEBSITE

livia@icarusfilms.com
718-488-8900

 

‘Prairie Trilogy,’ All-American Stories of Socialism

Companion pieces to Mr. Hanson and Mr. Nilsson’s 1978 feature “Northern Lights,”

The first of the three films is “Prairie Fire,”
The other two films, “Rebel Earth” and “Survivor”

John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, co-directors of Cannes Camera d’Or winner Northern Lights and fellow members of San Francisco’s Cine Manifest film collective, collaborated on this remarkable series of documentaries underwritten by the North Dakota Humanities Council and the North Dakota AFL-CIO. In Prairie Fire, 97-year-old ex-organizer and poet Henry Martinson recounts the 1916 birth of the Socialist Nonpartisan League—also the subject of Northern Lights—his narrative accompanied by images shot by Nilsson’s own grandfather, Frithjof Holmboe. Rebel Earth finds Martinson, accompanied by a younger farmer, revisiting the scenes of his life, seeking out the spot of his Divide County homestead. Survivor, finished the year before Martinson’s death, focuses on the biography of its subject, found in a funny and expansive mood. A gorgeously-shot work of documentary-as-historical corrective, which finds hope for the future through excavating a radical past.

 

Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!

U.S.A. (Director: Morgan Spurlock, Screenwriters: Jeremy Chilnick, Morgan Spurlock, Producers: Keith Calder, Jessica Calder, Spencer Silna, Nicole Barton, Jeremy Chilnick, Matthew Galkin) — Muckraking filmmaker Morgan Spurlock reignites his battle with the food industry – this time from behind the register – as he opens his own fast food restaurant. U.S. Premiere (Sundance 2018)

 

Hazelnuts and Child Labor (2015)

Directed by:  Mehmet Ülger
Running Time: 52 min
Starring:  

Website: N/a

Synopsis: In 2010 Zara, a nine year old, picks hazelnuts with her family in the Turkish Black Sea region. Working 11 hours per day during the harvest in August, often seven days a week, in the evening, they return to a tent camp where no facilities are available. Making this journey every year, Zara and her friends routinely return to school late. Five years later has anything changed? Has child labor been reduced? Have the facilities for seasonal workers been improved? And how fare the children who are doing the hard labor?

 
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Posted by on February 24, 2017 in Children, Farm & Food

 

Brandworkers May Day Campaign Video (2015)

Directed by: Des Almoradie
Running Time: 5 min
Starring: N/a

Website: N/a

Synopsis: This short documentary sheds crucial light on the harsh realities faced by food factory workers who toil behind the scenes of the so-called sustainable food movement. While people enjoy the growth of sustainable food produced in the five boroughs including artisanal bread, hummus, and much more, tragically, like so many aspects of the food system and economy, the great promise of local food is being undermined by the serious mistreatment of low-income immigrant workers.

 
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Posted by on February 22, 2017 in Documentary, Farm & Food

 

At Any Price (2012)

Directed by: Ramin Bahrani
Running Time: 105 min
Starring: N/A

Website: N/a

Synopsis: A farming family’s business is threatened by an unexpected crisis, further testing the relationship between a father and his rebellious son.

 
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Posted by on February 22, 2017 in Drama, Farm & Food

 

A Piece of the Dream: Amanda (2015)

Directed by:  Darian Henry
Running Time: 6 min
Starring: N/A

Website: N/a

Synopsis: Amanda, a single mother of two, speaks passionately on her active role in the Fight For $15. The film also explores her retelling of the unfair treatment she received working at both McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts along with the current struggles she faces raising her sons and living on minimum wage in Albany NY.

 
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Posted by on February 22, 2017 in Documentary, Farm & Food

 

Lamb (2015)

Initial release: November 26, 2015 (Germany)

A beautiful Ethiopian feature film tells the story of two characters who don’t fit into traditional rural life in that country. One is a young boy more adept at cooking than typically male tasks. The other is an outspoken teenage girl who is being drawn into local radical political debates.

 

Dolores (2016)

U.S.A. (Director: Peter Bratt) — Dolores Huerta bucks 1950s gender conventions by co-founding the country’s first farmworkers’ union. Wrestling with raising 11 children, gender bias, union defeat and victory, and nearly dying after a San Francisco Police beating, Dolores emerges with a vision that connects her newfound feminism with racial and class justice. World Premiere (Sundance)

 
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Posted by on December 18, 2016 in Documentary, Farm & Food