Film Screenings: Nourish and Nicotine Bees

Nourish
Sunday, May 20, 2012, 2 p.m.
Blackstone Library, Branford

With beautiful visuals and inspiring stories, the Nourish film traces our relationship to food from a global perspective to personal action steps. Nourish illustrates how food connects to such issues as biodiversity, climate change, public health, and social justice.

The award-winning Nourish engages viewers with the following program segments:

• Connections: By connecting seemingly unrelated people and places, this segment demonstrates the interdependence of our global community. Weaving together such themes as food and health, food and biodiversity, and food and community, “Connections” examines some of the most important issues of our time.
• Seed to Table: This segment leads viewers on a remarkable tour of our food chain. The story follows two seeds—corn and tomato—each traveling a very different path to make a meal. “Seed to Table” vividly illustrates where our food comes from and how it gets to us.
• Vote with Your Fork: With clarity and wit, best-selling author Michael Pollan shows how food serves as a metaphor for our values. In a far-ranging conversation, he invites a reflection on such questions as “What is food wisdom?” and “Why should we know the story of our food?”
• Be the Difference: The final segment offers specific steps that individuals and groups can take to create a more sustainable food future. Themes include: Teach and Learn, Grow Your Own, Create Community, Change the Menu, Shop Wisely, and Take a Stand.

Nicotine Bees
Saturday, June 23, 2012, 2 p.m.
Blackstone Library, Branford

In 2005-2006, bee “colony collapse” occurred simultaneously in dozens of countries. After years of research, experts and recent studies point to neonicotinoids – a widely-used group of pesticides used on food crops. This was unlike anything seen before, even by the oldest beekeepers in the U.S., Canada and Europe. And contrary to popular belief, the jury is not out on what happened. It seems that bees are now being bombarded by pesticides made of synthetic nicotine that is bonded with cyanide. This new material hit the market in 1995 and in 2005, when the patents expired, many companies around the globe released their versions of the same chemicals. Ever since, bees and other insects have been paying the price for this new class of poison. And since these systemic pesticides spread throughout the whole plant (pollen, nectar, leaf, etc.), there is no escape for honey bees or the hundreds of other native bee species that plants depend on for pollination.

Nicotine Bees is a 2010 documentary film by Kevin Hansen. The goal of the film was to get to the truth about why the honeybees of the world are in big trouble, and why our food supply is in trouble with them. The answers are clear - and have been for several years. They filmed on 3 continents to find out the real reasons why bees are in catastrophic decline - and why many people don’t want the real story to be told.

These films are cosponsored by Audubon Connecticut.


(From the May Newsletter)