The Flatirons Food Film Festival has announced details for Farm Labor: The Human Cost of Your Food, an online series on farm worker activism and minority farmers co-presented with the Boulder County Farmers Markets . The program will offer feature films and speakers like People’s Farm Farm Manager Clayton Harvey on the White Apache homelands in Arizona and Frontline Farming Executive Director and Co-Founder Fatuma Emmad, affiliate professor at Regis University and lecturer in the Masters for Environment Graduate Program at CU-Boulder.
The FFFF’s “Farm Labor” online series will take place on Saturday, July 24 and Sunday, July 25. Its two programs offer streaming films, Peabody Award winner Dolores and Food Chains, 2015 James Beard Foundation Award for Special/Documentary. Each will also include a panel discussion and Q&A.
Dolores program, Saturday, July 24, 6:30-9:10 p.m.
6:30-9:10 p.m. MST: Viewers can watch Dolores, a documentary about Dolores Huerta, an equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers union (United Farm Workers) with Cesar Chavez. Huerta tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez. The film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s life to social change.
The post-film discussion will focus on the life and activism of Dolores Huerta (still currently active at the age of 91) and her place in the United Farm Workers as well as a farm worker and civil rights organizer. Randy Shaw, author of Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century and a participant in the film, will also speak in addition to others.
Food Chains program, Sunday, July 25, 1:30-3:45 p.m. MST
1:30-3:45 p.m. MST: Viewers can watch Food Chains, an exposé about present-day activist farm workers who battle to defeat the $4 trillion global supermarket industry, revealing the rampant abuse of farm laborers in the U.S. Documentary subjects include members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Dolores Huerta, Eric Schlosser, Eva Longoria, Barry Estabrook, Kerry Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As a book end to the examination of the activism of LatinX farm workers in this documentary, the post-film discussion will focus on the challenges that BIPOC farmers have encountered in face of institutional discrimination, how they have responded to it (both generally and in terms of farm labor), and the $4 billion debt relief for black and other farmers of color included in the American Recovery Plan.
Speakers include Clayton Harvey, featured in Gather, the recent celebrated documentary on Indigenous Americans reclaiming their spiritual and cultural identities through obtaining sovereignty over their ancestral food systems, and Fatuma Emmad of Frontline Farming, Regis University, CU-Boulder, and Bountiful By Design , a sustainable landscape company. A farm worker advocate and agricultural advocate, Fatuma is dedicated to re-framing ideas of food security. Andrew Calabrese, a professor of Media Studies and an Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs in the University of Colorado’s College of Media, Communication, and Information (CMCI) , will moderate.
Ticketing and viewing
$12 viewing fee per film
$20 series pass (both films)
Tickets are available here.
Those who can’t join the live presentation can still access the film and recorded post-film panel discussion and Q&A until 11:59pm on Sunday, August 1.
Check the Festival Facebook page for the latest information on “Farm Labor: The Human Cost of Your Food” events.