The Public Square at the IHC presents a screening of this acclaimed documentary film, followed by a panel discussion on sustainable food.
CHICAGO –– What exactly goes into making the food in a local grocery store? And what do you eat if there isn’t a store around you? How can we combat the “food desert” phenomenon? How can the average consumer agitate for greater access to local and sustainable products in their neighborhood?
The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council presents a special screening of King Corn, followed by a thought-provoking discussion about the availability and sustainability of food in modern culture featuring local food activist LaDonna Redmond and artist Claire Pentecost.
This event will take place on Saturday, March 15th from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theater (77 E. Randolph St., Chicago). This program is free and open to the public. Reservations are required and can be made by e-mailing events@prairie.org or by calling 312.422.5580 . Independent Television Service (ITVS), the Chicago Cultural Center, Independent Lens, and WTTW Channel 11 are the co-sponsors of this special screening.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
LaDonna Redmond is a community food security activist working on Chicago’s west side. She is the President and CEO of The Institute for Community Resource Development (ICRD), a non-profit, community based organization that assists residents of urban communities obtain access to safe, healthy food through the development of alternative food systems. Ms. Redmond and her husband Tracey are involved in developing an urban farm in partnership with the University of Illinois. She sits on numerous local and national boards, including the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture and Governor Rod Blagojevich’s Advisory Council on Agriculture, the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago’s Children, and the Chicago Public School Task Force to Improve Healthy Eating. Ms. Redmond’s writing has appeared in Orion Magazine, New Farm, and the New York Times. She received her BA from Antioch College.
Claire Pentecost is an artist and writer, engaging a variety of media to interrogate the imaginative and institutional structures that organize divisions of knowledge. Having spent years tinkering in a conceptual laboratory for ideas about the natural and the artificial, her recent projects concentrate on industrial and bioengineered agriculture, the alternatives and the trade regimes that force one over the other. She is currently work-shopping a beta phase of VisibleFood: a wiki based website dedicated to exposing the hidden costs of the global corporate system that produces our food. Pentecost is Associate Professor in the Photography Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she teaches photography, drawing, critical theory and interdisciplinary seminars.
MORE ABOUT 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. 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. It has been praised as “Enormously entertaining! A moral, socio-economic odyssey through the American food system” by The Boston Globe.
ABOUT THE PUBLIC SQUARE AT THE IHC
The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council fosters debate, dialogue, and exchange of ideas about cultural, social and political issues with an emphasis on social justice. Programs promote participatory democracy by creating space for public conversations.
This program is part of The Public Square’s “Civic Cinema” series. An exhilarating series of films, forums, and conversations, “Civic Cinema”uses the most exceptionally creative and engaging documentary films of our times to help communities talk about most pressing social issues. More information about The Public Square at the IHC is available at www.thepublicsquare.org.
The Illinois Humanities Council is an educational organization dedicated to fostering a culture in which the humanities are a vital part of the lives of individuals and communities. Through its programs and grants, the IHC promotes greater understanding of, appreciation for, and involvement in the humanities by all Illinoisans, regardless of their economic resources, cultural background, or geographic location. Organized as a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1973, the IHC is now a private nonprofit (501 [c] 3) organization that is funded by contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations; by the Illinois General Assembly; and by the NEH.
D A R E T O K N O W
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