2014-01-01
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While the debate continues about GMOs, Roundup and other toxic pesticides, this powerful film shares remarkable stories of people who regain their health after discovering the secret ingredients in their food and making a bold commitment to avoid them.
We all love food. As a society, we devour countless cooking shows, culinary magazines and foodie blogs. So how could we possibly be throwing nearly 50% of it in the trash? Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping and survive only on discarded food. What they find is truly shocking.
A look back on the warning signs of the 2014 Ebola crisis as the world responds to COVID-19.
Ayi comes from a rural area of Eastern China and doesn’t have the residential permit that would allow her to work in Shanghai. Yet, she has been cooking in the streets for twenty years, in an old neighbourhood soon to be demolished. The film unveils the chaos of an ultra-modern city aiming to wipe out so-called substandard practices and to deport an unwanted population.
How safe is the future of the world’s food? This documentary explores a growing crisis in world agriculture. Plant breeding has created today’s crops, which are high yielding but vulnerable to disease and insects. To keep crops healthy, breeders tap all the genetic diversity of the world’s food plants. But that rich resource is quickly being wiped out. (NFB)
Morgan Spurlock subjects himself to a diet based only on McDonald's fast food three times a day for thirty days without exercising to try to prove why so many Americans are fat or obese. He submits himself to a complete check-up by three doctors, comparing his weight along the way, resulting in a scary conclusion.
From New York City to the farmlands of the Midwest, there are 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., yet one dish in particular has conquered the American culinary landscape with a force befitting its military moniker—“General Tso’s Chicken.” But who was General Tso and how did this dish become so ubiquitous? Ian Cheney’s delightfully insightful documentary charts the history of Chinese Americans through the surprising origins of this sticky, sweet, just-spicy-enough dish that we’ve adopted as our own.
Michael Mosley transformed the lives of millions of people. In this programme, we look back at an extraordinary broadcasting career which spanned almost 40 years. Fronting series such as Trust Me I’m a Doctor and the hit podcast Just One Thing, Michael used his warm, often funny approach to deliver important, life-changing health messages. He started behind the scenes as an award-winning science journalist and producer, before becoming a much-loved presenter. His programmes have made a lasting impact on the nation’s health habits, from intermittent fasting to the benefits of a cold shower. Michael also shared his own struggles with audiences worldwide. As a chronic insomniac, he made programmes about sleep and, ever curious, he would also go to extremes in the pursuit of science, even infecting himself with a tapeworm. Celebrating Michael’s career, this programme marks the enormous impact he made, touching the lives of so many
Two countries, two restaurants, one vision. At Gabriela Cámara's acclaimed Contramar in Mexico City, the welcoming, uniformed waiters are as beloved by diners as the menu featuring fresh, local seafood caught within 24 hours. The entire staff sees themselves as part of an extended family. Meanwhile at Cala in San Francisco, Cámara hires staff from different backgrounds and cultures, including ex-felons and ex-addicts, who view the work as an important opportunity to grow as individuals. A Tale of Two Kitchens explores the ways in which a restaurant can serve as a place of both dignity and community.
Both during and after pregnancy, yoga is a perfect way to firm your body, build strength, and gain flexibility. These two yoga practices, filmed in a serene garden overlooking the Pacific Ocean, are also a wonderful way to maintain emotional balance and reduce stress during the exciting and often hectic times surrounding the birth of a child. In the prenatal sequence you'll practice safe and simple movements intended to strengthen and tone your body at any stage of pregnancy, while providing relaxation that will help create a luminous space in which your baby will thrive. The postnatal sequence is designed to redefine your body, restore your energy, and help you reconnect to yourself and your own wellness.
Unsupersize Us is the follow up to the award-winning film Unsupersize Me. Director Juan-Carlos Asse takes five subjects from his hometown that all suffer from common health issues and puts them on regimen of a plant based diet and exercise for six weeks. The results are impressive as the five people quickly turn their health around in the six-week period. Asse tests the 5 subjects with many exciting physical challenges throughout the film. The film showcases cooking skills, healthy shopping, eating healthy on the road, and mental fortitude. An interesting twist occurs when Asse reveals his own trials and tribulations including a seven-year federal prison sentence... leading him to true freedom.
After years of overproduction, the Reagan administration unloads over 500 million pounds of surplus cheese on the American public in the 1980s. The pungent dairy product comes to be known as 'Government Cheese.'
Our most mundane daily lives are full of chemicals. Embedded in plastics, detergents and toasters, nestled in food, cans, toys, shampoos, they are invisible and everywhere at once, including in our bodies. Consumer society and petrochemical magic wander into our little interiors under names that are strictly unknown and perfectly barbaric. Phthalates, brominated flame retardants, parabens, bisphenol-A have the unfortunate disadvantage of burglarizing our hormonal privacy: they are endocrine disruptors. For the renowned scientists who appear in this documentary, this chemical impregnation is not unrelated to the development of so-called modern diseases – from breast cancer to obesity. The observation, rather serious, does not prevent the film from taking the side of the second degree.
Living in downtown Toronto to attend school, Lina Li returns to the comfort of home in Thornhill and her mother's cooking. In this candid short, filmmaker Lina Li and her mother engage in an intimate conversation about immigration to Canada, misunderstandings, barriers to communicating, love and the taste of home.
Pioneering Australian bio-artists SymbioticA showcase their “Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle” project, the latest in a long line of potential technological solutions to the looming global food crisis. Will it save humanity from its doom? Where are the investors?
This explores the reality of chefs and cooks as they struggle to create dishes and experiences enjoyed on a daily basis. The restaurant industry is a tough business, not just for profits, but for everyone involved.
FAT: A Documentary 2 is the sequel to the international sensation that delves deeper into the lies and myths surrounding the age old question: "What should I be eating?"
State of Bacon tells the kinda real but mostly fake tale of an oddball group of characters leading up to the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon-enthusiasts, Governor Branstad, a bacon queen, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, members of PETA, and an envoy of Icelanders are not excluded from this bacon party and during the course of the film become intertwined with the organizers of the festival to show that bacon diplomacy is not dead.
Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner examines how mammoth corporations have taken over all aspects of the food chain in the United States, from the farms where our food is grown to the chain restaurants and supermarkets where it's sold. Narrated by author and activist Eric Schlosser, the film features interviews with average Americans about their dietary habits, commentary from food experts like Michael Pollan and unsettling footage shot inside large-scale animal processing plants.
“I am a hypochondriac”, admits Rosa Von Praunheim, the icon of the gay movement, right at the beginning at the film. The director, who turned seventy in 2012, is afraid of cancer, and he actually suffers from glaucoma, with osteoarthritis in his big toe. Von Praunheim is interested in alternative medicine and goes on a foray into the scene.