The virtual Food Justice Film Festival features award-winning films “Gather,” “Invisible Vegan,” “Dolores” and “Urban Roots,” as well as interviews with filmmakers and activists like Dolores Huerta, Jasmine Leyva and Sanjay Rawal. This festival explores the link between environmental injustice, climate change, food insecurity and white supremacy.
The festival explores how communities are fighting the inequities of our food system, conservation, farmworker rights, access to healthy and sustainable foods, plant-based diets, indigenous traditions, racial justice, resistance movements and grassroots activism, urban gardens and food sovereignty.
Films are free for all audiences. Each film will be available for 24-hours on its scheduled day during the #FoodJusticeFilmFestival.
Sign up to receive links to watch the films and Q&A panels. The films will be available within a 24-hour window of their scheduled screenings. The interviews are available permanently.
(Closed captioning and Spanish translation available upon request)
Schedule
Gather (September 24)
An intimate portrait of the growing movement among Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty.
Directed by Sanjay Rawal. Speakers include Sanjay Rawal (director) and Indigenous activists.
Invisible Vegan (September 25)
A 90-minute independent documentary that explores the problem of unhealthy dietary patterns in the African American community, foregrounding the health and wellness possibilities enabled by plant-based vegan diets and lifestyle choices. Directed by Jasmine Leyva.
Speakers include Jasmine Leyva (director), lauren Ornelas (director of the Food Empowerment Project) and the Veggie Mijas (activistas de la tierra).
Dolores (September 26)
Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in cofounding the first farmworkers’ unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century — and she continues the fight to this day, at 90. With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother of 11, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s life to social change.
Directed by Peter Bratt. Speakers include Dolores Huerta (legendary farmworker rights activist and focus of the documentary Dolores), Neza Xiuhtecutli (Food Worker Association, Florida), Ildi Carlisle-Cummins (California Institute for Rural Studies), and food justice advocate Alfonzo Chavez (Flowers and Bullets).
Urban Roots (September 27)
Follows the urban farming phenomenon in Detroit. A timely, moving and inspiring film that speaks to a nation grappling with collapsed industrial towns and the need to forge a sustainable and prosperous future.
Directed by Frank Fitzpatrick. Speakers include Jacqui Patterson (of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program) and farmers Jo’Vonna Johnson Cooke (Maitu Foods) and Eugene Cook (Grow Where You Are).
