ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — The public is invited to a local preview of “Fresh,” a documentary that celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system.
“Fresh” will be shown at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, in The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on the St. Bonaventure University campus. The presentation is hosted by the university’s Franciscan Center for Social Concern and Canticle Farm, a Community Supported Agriculture farm founded in 2001 by the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany.
A talk-back session featuring staff from Canticle Farm and several other growers will be held following the viewing of the movie. Canticle Farm has been providing fresh, Certified Naturally Grown vegetables to the local community since 2001.
“We take great pride in the pesticide- and chemical-free produce that is often harvested on the very same day as it is distributed or sold to our customers,” said David J. Schummer, Ph.D., assistant farm manager and education coordinator at Canticle Farm.
“Canticle Farm welcomes you to this free viewing of ‘Fresh.’ We hope that ‘Fresh’ will open the eyes of our neighbors who deserve nothing but the best vegetables available,” said Schummer.
“We, as a society, have in large part, lost contact with how our food is produced,” added Pierre E. Dionne, M.D., owner of Sojourner Farm, LLC, of Olean and a member of Canticle Farm’s Board of Directors. “The movie ‘Fresh’ offers an alternative and reaffirms that there are ways of raising animals that are both more humane and environmentally friendly,” Dionne said.
Among several main characters in the film, “Fresh” features urban farmer and activist Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner David Ball, challenging our chain-store dominated economy.
“Sustainable development requires recognizing the systematic connections among the challenges facing humanity,” said Darryl J. Mayeaux, Ph.D., a St. Bonaventure faculty member and member of the university’s Sustainability Committee. “Food is possibly the prime example of where we need to reconcile the interests of environmental, human and economic health.”
“Fresh” producer Ana Joanes is a Swiss-born documentary filmmaker whose work addresses pressing social issues through character-driven narratives. After traveling internationally to study the environmental and cultural impacts of globalization, she graduated from Columbia Law School in May 2000, awarded as a Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow. Thereafter, Joanes created Reel Youth, a video production program for youth coming out of detention. In 2003, Joanes and her friend Andrew Unger produced Generation Meds, a documentary exploring fears and misgivings about mental illness and medication. “Fresh” is her second feature documentary.
More information about “Fresh” is available at www.freshthemovie.com. The film is being shown as part of the university’s Francis Week celebration; additional details are available at www.sbu.edu. Learn more about Canticle Farm at www.canticlefarm.org.