The Coolidge Corner Theatre

King Corn
With Q&A featuring filmmaker Ian Cheney
One acre of corn tells the story of the crop reigning over the American countryside—and the American diet. 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 skeptical neighbors, genetically-modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, 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. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Aaron Woolf and featuring an original soundtrack by The Wowz. KING CORN is an entertaining and provocative new look at the American foodscape.

dirs. Aaron Woolf, Ian Cheney, Curt Ellis, 1h32m

Ticket Price: $9.75/$6.75 members

Reception featuring organic wine; local, sustainable popcorn from Harvey’s farm; Adina juice, local cheese; and crudités platters with local produce. Remarks by David Bove, Vineyard Brands. Reception is open to KING CORN and MONDOVINO ticket holders.

Mondovino
For thousands of years, wine has been a symbol of Western civilization. But, never has the fight for its soul been as desperate and defining as it is today. Never has so much pride—and money—been at stake. And, never have the battle lines been so clearly drawn between old world and new, between simple peasants and billionaires, and between the local and artisanal styles of wine production and the multinational and mass-produced ones. With wine sold at local supermarkets throughout the world, one can certainly argue that a greater number of consumers have a greater taste for wine than ever before. What that wines tastes like is another matter….

The ultimate film about wine and wine culture, MONDOVINO was filmed by award-winning director and sometime sommelier Jonathan Nossiter in five languages over a three-year period. Juxtaposing mom-and-pop wine growers with conglomerates, Nossiter intertwines multiple family dramas–some of which play like soap operas–and uncovers a complex tapestry of conflicts, conspiracies, and alliances that all stem from the production, distribution, and consumption of one of the oldest and most respected luxuries remaining.

MONDOVINO gives voice to those who create, critique, and do commerce in wine, offering up a surprisingly prismatic, varied, and sometimes controversial glimpse into something everyone enjoys but few people know much about.

dir. Jonathan Nossiter, 2h15m

Ticket Price: $6.75 All

Asparagus! A Stalk-umentary
With Q&A featuring filmmaker(bios)
This is the story of what happens when an obscure U.S. War on Drugs policy threatens to destroy the Asparagus Capital of the World. After 30 years of growing “Green Gold,” crowning a Mrs. Asparagus Queen and writing Super Stalk comic book heroes, the people of Oceana County Michigan are thrown smack-dab into the middle of the global economy. Watch as Ocean’s farmers take their fight from Senate Trade Hearings to marketing think-tanks, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the mountains of Peru. See how one rural American community is scrambling to keep its proud identity and source of survival against impossible odds. Directed and produced Kirsten Kelly and Anne de Mare.

dirs. Anne de Mare, Kristen Kelly, 53m

Ticket Price: $6.75 All

Science on Screen Presentation: Everything's Cool
With Q&A featuring Adam Wolfensohn, Co-producer; Ross Gelbspan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author; and Beth Daley, Boston Globe.

EVERYTHING’S COOL is a film about America finally “getting” global warming in the wake of the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action. While industry funded nay-sayers sing what just might be their swan song of pseudo- scientific deception, a group of self-appointed global warming messengers are on a high stakes quest to find the iconic image, the magic language, the points of leverage that will finally create the political will to move the United States from its reliance on fossil fuels to the new clean energy economy - AND FAST. Hold on... this is bigger than changing your light bulbs.

The Science on Screen series is co-presented by the Museum of Science and New Scientist Magazine. Special thanks to our fiscal sponsors Alex & Brit d’Arbeloff; Bay State Federal Savings and Charitable Foundation; Gesmer Updegrove, LLP; The Hamilton Company; Harold and Moura Brown; and to our series creator Richard Anders.

dirs. Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand, 1h45m

Ticket Price: $9.75/$6.75 MOS members/FREE Coolidge Members

The One Degree Factor
A declining caribou population in Alaska, rising asthma rates in the Caribbean, ailing coral reefs and temperature shifts in the world’s ocean are happening around the globe. Join scientists investigating these seemingly random occurrences and explore whether they are all linked to one Earth-changing phenomenon.

Hosted by Ed Norton, 55 min

Ticket Price: $6.75 All

A Fish Story
With Q&A featuring Madeleine Hall-Arber, Center for Marine and Social Sciences, MIT

A FISH STORY is the tale of two women who lead their communities in a battle for control of the ocean. Angela Sanfilippo of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Shareen Davis of Chatham, Massachusetts were born into fishing families and married men who continue to make a living from the sea. Fishing defines who they are and has sustained their communities for generations. But their way of life is threatened when a powerful coalition of national environmental groups file a lawsuit that could put hundreds of fishermen out of business. Three hundred years of fishing tradition and the health of the ocean hangs in the balance.

In the 1970s, enormous international fishing fleets decimated the waters off New England leaving local fishermen struggling to survive in the wake of this environmental disaster. Decades later, New England fishermen and environmentalist remain locked in an intense battle over the current health and future management of the ocean. And with the success of a broad sweeping lawsuit filed in 2000, environmentalists are demanding radical new conservation measures that could spell disaster for New England fishermen and their communities. Angela and Shareen find themselves at the center of this political storm as they struggle to save both fish and fishermen. Delving into the behind-the-scenes world of politicians, environmentalists, journalists, and fishermen, A FISH STORY confronts the hard choices faced when human needs and those of the environment collide.

dirs. Courtney Hayes and Tim Gallagher, 54m

Ticket Price: $6.75 All

Time and Tide
TIME AND TIDE is a poetic and absorbing documentary about a land and its people as they head toward irreversible tragedy. The story is told through the eyes of a group of expatriates from the island nation of Tuvalu. When they return to their home island after being away for many years, they find a place vastly different from the one they remember - the forces of globalization and global warming are severely reshaping the land and people they once knew so well. The film takes an unflinching look at the tragic fate of this remote island country, walking the line between hope and unimaginable loss. Within an artfully woven tapestry that confronts these profound global issues, the film paints an honest and poignant portrait of a homeland on the brink of extinction.

dir. Julie Bayer, 1hr, In English and Tuvaluan w/ English Subtitles

Ticket Price: $6.75 All

"The Sounds of Science"
Introduced by Fabian Cousteau, explorer, filmmaker and grandson of Jacques Cousteau
Live performance by Yo La Tengo with the projected undersea films of French filmmaker Jean Painlevé, 1hr30m

Before David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau - there was Jean Painlevé. Poetic pioneer of science films, Painlevé explored a twilight realm of vampire bats, seahorses, octopi, and liquid crystals. He made more than 200 science and nature films and was an early champion of the genre. Possessing a remarkable eye for life's eerie curiosities, Painlevé's art pivots on the premise that 'science is fiction'. He created a landscape of bug-eyed wonderment marked by a playful sense of nature's hidden poetry and scandalized the scientific world with films designed to entertain as well as edify.

In 2001, American artrockers Yo La Tengo were selected by the San Francisco International Film Festival committee to compose new music for the films of Jean Painlevé. Their alternately sombre and joyously moody music seemed like a natural fit for Painlevé's dramatic underwater studies. The score is available on CD and has just been released on a DVD entitled Science is Fiction, this evening is a rare opportunity to hear the material played live by the band and accompanied by the films.

Ticket Price: $25.00