Movie showings: "King Corn" and "Big River"

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Green Tuesdays Films & Lectures series presents:
"King Corn" and "Big River"
Oregon Public Library
256 Brook St.
6:30 pm.

In "King Corn," Cheney and Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, moved to the heartland to learn where food came from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, and powerful herbicides, they planted and grew a bumper crop of America's most productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they tried to follow their harvest into the food system, what they found raised troubling questions about what we subsidize, and how we eat.

In "Big River," the filmmakers return to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has had on the people and places downstream. In a journey that spans from the heartland to the Gulf of Mexico, the two friends trade their combine for a canoe and set out to see the big world their little acre of corn has touched. Half of Iowa's topsoil, they learn, has been washed out to sea. Fertilizer runoff has spawned a hypoxic "dead zone" in the Gulf. And back at their acre, the herbicides they used are blamed for a cancer cluster that reaches all too close to home.

Can't make it to Oregon? Catch these films in Mt. Horeb on April 28, and Cross Plains on May 3. Calendar here.

Green Tuesdays: Creating awareness, sparking conversation, empowering
change.

Green Tuesdays Films & Lectures is a free series of films, resentations,and conversations that helps us become more aware of the resources we rely on and the actions we can take to better our world. In Oregon, sessions are on the third Tuesday of the month, September through May. All are welcome.

You can also enjoy Green Tuesdays (and Thursdays!) with our partners in Monona, Mt. Horeb, Cross Plains, Madison, and Middleton. To see the calendar for all Green Tuesday and Thursday dates, go here.

Green Tuesdays is sponsored by The Natural Step Monona in collaboration with Oregon Working to Live Sustainably (OWLS), Mount Horeb Area Sustainability Network, RGPL Green Tuesdays (Cross Plains), the City of Middleton Sustainability Committee, Edgewood College, and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and is supported by the Dane County Environmental Council.