News

June 5, 2009 - [ Associated Press ]

NEW YORK — The new documentary “Food, Inc.” begins with idyllic scenes of American farmland, panning from golden fields of hay to a solitary cowboy rounding up a herd of cattle. Then the camera zooms in on a grocery cart overflowing with packaged food and rolling down the aisles of a gaudily lit supermarket.

June 2, 2009 - [ WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY ]

A lot of ink has been dedicated to the topic of farming and agribusiness recently, but very little film. Documentary director Robert Kenner says there’s a reason for that. “Food corporations don’t want us thinking about food. They don’t want to talk about it; they obviously don’t want us looking in. They are really into promoting that myth that [our food] comes from farms with white picket fences with red barns.” Kenner’s documentary Food Inc., which will be feted at two private screenings next week before it hits theaters June 12, debunks that idea — and then some. Viewers witness factory farms wall to wall with immobile, breast-heavy chickens and pigs that get no exercise other than their walk to slaughter. “Green Acres” this is not.

May 28, 2009 - [ Slant Magazine ]

In a scene that precedes even the main titles of Pressure Cooker, a bony, middle-aged black woman sporting the last remnants of a youthful afro lugs a bulky sterilite container of kitchen supplies through a darkened high school at dawn. This inconspicuous act—a token of sincere devotion, we soon learn—forms an essential exposition to the story of Wilma Stephenson, a "tough love" firecracker of an inner-city culinary arts teacher who makes Gordon Ramsay seem as innocuous, and pedagogically inept, as the simpleton human puppet protagonist of Ratatouille. Not five minutes into the documentary, Stephenson is lecturing her latest group of elective students with the hell-hath-no-fury Ebonic colloquialisms of Nina Simone on an in-studio tirade and the stentorian surliness of R. Lee Ermey barking out barracks commands.

May 28, 2009 - [ New York Post ]

'PRESSURE Cooker" is that rare commod ity: a film with only good things to say about public schools.

It's an inspirational documentary about African-American high school foodies in Philadelphia who take a cooking course in the hope of winning a scholarship to a prestigious culinary institute.

May 21, 2009 - [ Social Vibe ]

There are no if's, and's or butt's about it - school lunches today are pretty gnarly. Curly fries, greasy pizza, and soda - it's not the healthiest food you can eat. Unless you bring your lunch from home, or are lucky enough to go to school that has more nutritious alternatives, you're pretty much outta luck.

Alyssa Milano has joined up with the Social Action Campaign to create a PSA for the documentary Food, Inc that sheds a little light on childhood obesity and the contributing factors, such as grody school lunches.

You can help by signing this petition to encourage Congress to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act - which includes provisions to remove junk food and soda from schools. They need 100,000 signatures in around three weeks, and your signature could get them that much closer to getting healthier food alternatives for kids.

May 28, 2009 - [ Box Office ]

Part Gordon Ramsey, part Jaime Escalante, Culinary Arts instructor Wilma Stephenson brings fury and passion to the craft of cooking, inspiring her students at Philadelphia’s inner city Frankford High School to excel in ways that sometimes seem cruel and even counterintuitive. But the methods deliver undeniable results, not simply in the classroom but also in the often turbulent lives of her students.

May 28, 2009 - [ Phoodie.info ]

Since 1990, the Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP) has provided career opportunities in the restaurant industry to over 10,000 public high school students annually, providing teacher training, college advising, over $25 million in scholarships, and $2.5 million in supplies and equipment to classrooms. The program has touched many public schools in the Philadelphia area including Frankford High School, whose involvement is the subject of a new documentary, Pressure Cooker, premiering in New York City tomorrow, May 27.

May 28, 2009 - [ The New York Times ]

Pressure Cooker belongs to the honorable if overpopulated genre of inspirational films (both documentaries and features) dedicated to the proposition that one committed, passionate teacher can make all the difference in the lives of disadvantaged students. Wilma Stephenson, the sparkplug whose culinary arts classes at Frankford High School in Northeast Philadelphia give young people from poor backgrounds the opportunity to compete for scholarships, is a strict disciplinarian who has taught at Frankford for 38 years.

May 28, 2009 - [ NPR ]

Wilma Stephenson's culinary arts course at Philadelphia's Frankford High School is not your mother's home-economics class. Stephenson and her students are the subject of the new documentary Pressure Cooker. The teacher explains her high demands in the classroom. Stephenson is joined by one of her former students, Fatoumata Dembele.

May 28, 2009 - [ New York Magazine ]

Forget vying for fame on Top Chef. In the documentary Pressure Cooker, opening at the IFC May 27, three high-school students are just trying to cook their way out of Northeast Philly. They “have the courage” to sign up for class with thunderous Mrs. Stephenson, who prepares students for a scholarship competition through the Careers Through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP). If a bit of yelling in the trailer is any indication, expect a film about tough love.

May 28, 2009 - [ TRANSRACIAL ]

While the film does have a “we’ve heard it all before” feel, its look into the lives of minority kids in North Philly hoping success in the kitchen will get them out of the ghetto is novel, innovative and compelling. Heart-warming too.

May 13, 2009 - [ THE HUFFINGTON POST ]

Nothing delights me more than talking about organic to a wide audience, but in your piece, Organic vs Conventional: Have you been robbed?, you are taking aim at the wrong target. Much like the person who frets over which china to use while the house is on fire, you take organic-- which accounts for 2-3% of food sales-- to task while ignoring the rest of our food system.

March 6, 2009 - [ Indiewire ]

Sundance award-winning doc, “The Cove,” is set for a summer U.S. release via Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, while all other territories have been nabbed by The Works International and James Atherton’s Quickfire Films Fund. Participant Media is also on board for the release.

March 6, 2009 - [ Daily Variety ]

Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions have acquired domestic rights to "The Cove," winner of the audience award for documentary at Sundance, with plans for a summer release.
U.K.-based the Works Intl., in conjunction with James Atherton's Quickfire Films Fund, has acquired all other territories. In addition, Participant Media has signed on to perform outreach for "The Cove," working with nonprofits and community groups.

March 1, 2009 - [ Columbia Missourian ]

Film director Robert Kenner and discussion leader Jason Silverman listen to a question from an audience member during the Q&A following the showing of Kenner's film Food, Inc. at the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts during the True/False Film Festival. The film will open in New York and Los Angeles in late Spring.

February 23, 2009 - [ Independent Spirit Awards ]

Congratulations to Tom McCarthy for winning Best Director at the 2009 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

For a full list of winners:

February 23, 2009 - [ Mother Jones ]

Food, Inc. is the latest in a line of cinematic polemics that includes Super Size Me, King Corn, and The Future of Food. Yet this urgent, graphic film exposes more atrocious things about the food we eat than all of its predecessors combined. Within five minutes of the opening credits, the screen fills with shots of assembly-line workers staple tagging the heads of chicks, close-ups of hens' legs buckling under the weight of their own breasts, and dying chickens packed into polluted sheds. Then come the acres of cattle ankle deep in manure, sick cows being tortured before slaughter, and engineers proudly displaying pink slabs of ammonia-washed "hamburger meat filler." Director Robert Kenner isn't just concerned with the suffering of animals. He also profiles Americans caught in the snare of the food industry, like Barbara Kowalcyk, whose two-and-a-half-year-old son died after eating an E. coli-infected hamburger. She's spent six years lobbying Congress to empower the USDA to shut down meat plants that repeatedly fail microbial testing. (Who knew it couldn't?)

February 18, 2009 - [ The Los Angeles Times ]

The 59th incarnation of the Berlinale film festival was the usual teeming salmagundi of preening celebs, caterwauling paparazzi and geekily bespectacled industry hangers-on conspicuously toting red swag bags. But in Kulinarisches Kino, a little adjunct to the program, a lineup of nine food-themed films took on the mission of exploring the increasing disconnect between ourselves and the source of our food.

February 9, 2009 - [ Reuters ]

Two documentary films showing at the Berlin film festival take a swipe at the international food industry, one of several aspects of big business that come in for criticism at the event this year. Confessing his disdain for fast food before a gala screening of Food, Inc., festival director Dieter Kosslick included the two anti-agribusiness films in this year's festival and seems to have captured the public mood.

February 5, 2009 - [ Astrology Examiner ]

The producer of Gandhi, Chariots of Fire and Dances With Wolves wants to create an emotional bond between people and our planet’s threatened seas and is spending millions to film oceanic life.
Oceans, a project of blockbuster Canadian producer Jake Eberts and fellow film-maker Jacques Perrin of France, will have its American opening on Earth Day, about April 22, 2010, following an October premiere in France.