Participant Media's and River Road Entertainment's Food, Inc. Opens 3rd Annual Culinary Cinema of the Berlin International Film Festival
LOS ANGELES-(Business Wire)-February 10, 2009 - Participant Media's and River Road Entertainment's documentary Food, Inc., directed by Robert Kenner, opened the 3rd annual Culinary Cinema of the Berlin International Film Festival on Sunday, February 8.
At the sold-out event, the film was screened in the 1500-seat Freidrichstadtpalast, followed by a tasty and informative panel discussion featuring director Kenner, co-producer/author Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) as well as actor/director Gael Garcia Bernal, Carlo Petrini (the Italian founder of the Slow Food movement), Renate Kunast (the former German Health Minister) Dr. Hans Theo Jachmann (of agri-business Syngenta Ltd.), Dr. Heinrich Graf von Bassewitz (of the German Farmers Associaton), moderated by Jörg Thadeusz. After the panel, all the attendees were treated to a bowl of organic vegetable stew prepared by Berlin’s top chef, Tim Raue, and inspired by the film.
Food, Inc. lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. We learn that our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.
According to Reuters, Kenner told the audience that he tried to get the corporations—Monsanto, Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods—to present their side of the story in Food, Inc. Kenner told the audience, "We reached out to the companies. They seemed interested but in the end almost all said no, they didn't want to be involved."
Reuters also reported that Schlosser said, "The film is ostensibly about food but it's also about the concentrated power in the United States and the corrupting effects of that power. But it's not only the United States. It's a real threat to ordinary people when one company has so much control."
Magnolia Pictures will release Food, Inc. in the U.S. in June.
Participant Media is a Los Angeles-based entertainment company that focuses on socially relevant, commercially viable feature films, documentaries and television, as well as publishing and digital media. www.participantmedia.com
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