Film still from Food, Inc., premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival revs up today, the annual ten-day celluloid extravaganza/endurance test. Much of the press coverage will be fast-breaking nonsense about Hollywood celebu-bots and in-depth analysis of their restaurant choices. But there are actually some movies about the real world to be had. We’ll point out a few of them on the blog as the festival progresses.
The craziness of the modern food industry is something we’ve talked about before, such as this Q & A with Alberta writer Andrew Nikiforuk, where he argues that disease is simply an inevitable outcome of our inreasingly globalized food system.
Food, Inc., directed by documentarian Robert Kenner and featuring commentary by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, examines how modern food production is playing havoc with us and the environment. The documentary is produced by Participant Media, the politically progressive studio that made An Inconvenient Truth, Charlie Wilson’s War, and Murderball.
Food is on everyone’s radar right now, which is why it’s timely that our September-October issue, on newsstands very soon, includes a feature on the failure of a sustainable bison farm in Saskatchewan, and the string of policy failures that helped kill it. Writer Margaret Webb recently published her book Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms. Check back here soon when the feature is available online, or — here comes the hard sell — pick up a copy of the new issue on your local newsstand.