Tales from Planet Earth: The Hunger Season

Working Films reports from Tales from Planet Earth. When watching news about famines and starving people in foreign countries, we often feel removed from the problem, even as we express pity and regret. Beadie Finzi's The Hunger Season shatters our illusions of distance, however, revealing the complex interconnections between global economic systems, the hunger for new biofuel sources of energy, global climate change, political unrest, and resulting devastation of drought and famine for millions of people around the world. Tracing the journey of food aid from the fields of Wisconsin farmers to USAID and finally to Swaziland, where Justice, a village leader, struggles to feed his neighbors, Finzi brings home our role in hunger crises and also our ability to help avert such problems.

See pieces of the conversation with organizers after the screening discussing issues and Share the Shares - an initiative by the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC) to raise funds to purchase six CSA shares that will be donated to the Centro Hispano and First United Methodist Church (FUMC) food pantries.

In addition, after The Hunger Season there will be a special meal that will help profile a new national engagement project being built around the film, called "Meal & A Movie in a Box," which was designed through Tales from Planet Earth's pilot screening of the film in October 2008.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• tfpe09
• tales from planet earth
• the hunger season