Nashville Food Blog

On Tuesday nights June 16 through July 23, Warner Park Nature Center will host a series of food-related films, kicking off with Tableland on June 16. The free screenings take place at 6:30 p.m. at 7311 Highway 100 and will be followed by panel discussions with local restaurateurs, chefs, farmers, writers and other experts in the food field.

The six-week series is sponsored by Martha Stamps Catering, Slow Food Nashville, Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee, Tennessee Organic Growers Association, Fido/Bongo Java, Delvin Farms, Warner Park Nature Center and Cool People Care.

A complete schedule of films follows after the jump.

June 16: Tableland
From the orchards of Interior B.C., Napa Highlands, rural Quebec and other places where "slow food" is celebrated, Tableland consists of interviews with chefs, farmers, writers, teachers, activists and other proponents of the production of tasty, local and seasonal food from field to plate. The movie contains themed sections on taste, sustainability, the environment and is filled with fun stories, entertaining facts and tasty treats.

June 23: King Corn
King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the East Coast, move to the Heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat--and how we farm.

June 30: A Sense of Wonder
When pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, the backlash from her critics thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Despite her love of privacy, Carson's convictions and her foresight regarding the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into a very public and controversial role. Using many of Miss Carson's own words, Kaiulani Lee embodies this extraordinary woman in a documentary style film, which depicts Carson in the final year of her life. Struggling with cancer, Carson recounts with both humor and anger the attacks by the chemical industry, the government, and the press as she focuses her limited energy to get her message to Congress and the American people. The film is an intimate and poignant reflection of Carson's life as she emerges as America's most successful advocate for the natural world. A Sense of Wonder was shot in HD by Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler at Carson's cottage on the coast of Maine.

July 7: Rise of the Southern Cheese and Saving Seeds
Saving Seeds was made by Joe York and Matt Bruder. It offers a portrait of Bill Best, an heirloom bean and tomato farmer of Berea, Ken. The film was a finalist for the Golden Snail Award from Slow Food.

The Rise of Southern Cheese was also made by Joe York, but in partnership this time with Matthew Graves. This film takes a look at artisanal cheese producers in the South. It chronicles three makers of fine Southern cheeses: Belle Chevre in Alabama, Sweet Grass Dairy in Georgia, and Bonnie Blue Farm in Tennessee.

July 14: The Real Dirt On Farmer John
The epic tale of a maverick Midwestern farmer. Castigated as a pariah in his community, Farmer John bravely transforms his farm amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors and arson. He succeeds in creating a bastion of free expression and a revolutionary form of agriculture in rural America. Director Taggart Siegel focuses his cameras on radical farmer John Peterson for this documentary. Peterson turned his farm into a haven for hippies, radicals and artists in the 1960s, only to find the people he aimed to help turned on him as the years passed. The Real Dirt on Farmer John highlights these events and shows how Peterson eventually turned his life around after the tumultuous uprising against him.

July 21: Food Shorts
Media That Matters brings us our final evening of edutainment and discussion--a collection of shorts on food and sustainability. These short films range from a section of the highly acclaimed The Future of Food to European animation with a message. This last evening together will be both fun and free-flowing. Please feel free to bring some food and refreshment.