Thursday 5^th November, 8.30pm … Food Chains

Thursday 5^th November, 8.30pm … Food Chains

Narrated by Forest Whitaker, executive produced and starring actress Eva Longoria and author Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), there’s some serious star power behind this documentary about the treatment of migrant horticultural workers in America. Directed by Sanjay Rawal, Food Chains explains how the $4 trillion global supermarket industry controls the agricultural system in America, ultimately determining the wages of the farmworkers. The film follows a group of tomato pickers from Southern Florida who have banded together as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers or CIW, and are on a quest to get Publix, one of the biggest supermarket chains in America, to have a conversation with them about ways they can ensure a dignified life for farm workers and a more humane, transparent food chain. If the supermarket chains paid only a penny a pound more for the tomatoes the workers pick, that penny would go towards bringing their wages up to something nearer a living wage. At present, a nine hour shift earns these works $42.00 in the hand. The film also travels to the Napa Valley where it looks at the challenges facing farmworkers there, such as a lack of affordable accommodation. This is one of those films that’s simultaneously depressing and uplifting, and that’s largely due to the excellent job Rawal does of putting a human face on this troubling issue.   

 

Saturday 7^th November 8.30pm… Kings of Summer
Fans of Stand by Me will enjoy this coming of age directorial debut from Jordan Vogt-Roberts. A hit at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, Kings of Summer is a drama-comedy that captures the idea of boys wanting to escape oppressive parents and become men, and it’s a story told with wit, charm and whimsy. In Kings of Summer, three teenage friends Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and the kooky Biaggio (Moises Arias) run away from home and decide to spend the summer building a house in the woods, and living off the land. As you can imagine, image, their utopia isn’t all it’s jacked up to be. The film starts out as a fun adventure, but as it continues the tone of the film switches to something darker giving this film a genuine, alt-comedy edge. Vogt-Roberts is a Funny or Die Presents... alum and director of Comedy Central's Mash Up series, and made a name for himself in the film world with his short film Successful Alcoholics. You can see the influence of films from Vogt-Roberts’ own adolescence here (such as the work of John Hughes and Steven Spielberg) and yet at no point does this feel like a throwback. Instead it’s a contemporary, fresh take on a familiar story.

Monday 2^nd November, 8.30pm… The Green Prince

This is an extraordinary documentary – one that might have you wondering if in fact it’s a fictional drama shot as a documentary. Produced by the team who made The Imposter, The Green Prince tells the story of Mosab Hassan Yousef’s decade long collaboration with the Israeli secret-service as an informant. What makes this story remarkable is that Yousef is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a key member of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement. His family being harassed by the Israelis disrupted Yousef’s childhood and teenage years, and his father was imprisoned for periods of time, but for reasons that aren’t completely convincing in this film, Yousef decided to collaborate with the Israelis when arrested as a young man for buying firearms. The film is based on Yousef’s book Son of Hamas, and unfortunately for Israeli documentarian Nadav Schirman there is little visual material to support Yousef and his Shin Bet handler Gonen Ben Yitzhak’s story, so we’re left listening and looking at talking heads throughout this film. It’s a dry way of presenting this story, but the story itself is thrilling enough to keep you captivated.