Food Chain$

Director: Sanjay Rawal
Run time: 83 min.
Call number: HD1525 .F66 2014

"...Required to pick a minimum of 480 pounds of fruit per hour (hands moving so quickly that you would swear the film has been sped up), the workers average around $42 for a nine-hour shift. . . . “We live like animals in cramped housing,” one man says, as Mr. Rawal shows us jam-packed trailers and ragtag encampments. The ability to improve these conditions lies not with the farmers, we are told, but with the fast-food industry, restaurants and supermarkets whose contracts with buyers set the economics of the supply chain. But when a coalition of tomato pickers in Immokalee, Fla., began agitating for companies to pay a penny more per pound for their tomatoes, the state’s largest supermarket chain, Publix, refused to blink."

—Jeannette Catsoulis, N.Y. Times
 
 

 

Rich Hill: Three Boys in Small Town America

Director: Andrew Droz Palermo & Tracy Droz Tragos
Run time: 91 min.

Call number:  HV1437.R535 R53 2014


"The brutally sparse documentary 'Rich Hill' removes poverty from the realm of the abstract and makes it personal, closely chronicling the lives of three teenage boys—Andrew, Harley and Appachey—as they navigate adolescence in their impoverished (and cruelly named) Missouri town. . . . Rich Hill looks like a thousand other poor rural towns peppered across America — desolate landscapes, ramshackle houses, roads lined with fast-food restaurants and pawn shops. It's a town thin on resources and diversions and, even more importantly, jobs."
—Barbara VanDenburgh, The Arizona Republic

American Winter (2014)

Director: Harry Gantz, Joe Gantz
Run Time: 90 min.
Call Number: HC110.P6 A44 2013

"Years after the recession began, millions of families are struggling to meet their basic needs, and many formerly middle class families are finding themselves in financial crisis, and needing assistance for the first time in their lives. Meanwhile, the social safety net that was created to help people in difficult times has been weakened by massive budget cuts, creating a perfect storm of greater need and fewer resources to help families in trouble. . . . Filmed over the course of one winter in Portland, Oregon, American Winter presents an intimate and emotionally evocative snapshot of the state of our economy as it is playing out in many American families."

—Film distributor's website

Inequality for All (2014)

Director: Jacob Kornbluth
Run Time: 85 min.

"The advocacy documentary 'Inequality for All,' featuring former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, aims to be economic policy’s 'An Inconvenient Truth,' a left-leaning wakeup call for most Americans (affluent or not, young or old, Republican or Democrat) who have no idea just how hyper-concentrated our nation’s wealth distribution actually is. . . . The difference is that unlike Al Gore, Reich has an engaging sense of humor."
—Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune 

A Place at the Table (2013)

Directors:  Kristi Jacobson , Lori Silverbush

Run Time: 98 min.

"50 million people in the U.S. - one in four children - don't know where their next meal is coming from, despite our having the means to provide nutritious, affordable food for all Americans. Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush examine this issue through the lens of three people who are struggling with food insecurity: Barbie, a single Philadelphia mother who grew up in poverty and is trying to provide a better life for her two kids; Rosie, a Colorado fifth-grader who often has to depend on friends and neighbors to feed her and has trouble concentrating in school; and Tremonica, a Mississippi second-grader whose asthma and health issues are exacerbated by the largely empty calories her hardworking mother can afford."
—A Place at the Table film jacket