Food Inc. | Big River Man

I'm back home after a five-hour night drive - one of many things to file under "not as easy as it used to be." Sunday, I made it to three more screenings and had a delicious Cuban pork sandwich at the Ragtag.

Food, Inc. is going to be huge. It's a catch-all overview of industrialized food and a strong call for action some of the big offenders. Despite being an episodic advocacy piece, slick graphics, animation and visual panache give it momentum. Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser feature prominently, and if you've read their books don't expect a lot of new ground to be broken.

Playing to a doc film fest audience in a college down, Food, Inc. elicited applause and cheers throughout. Director Robert Kenner said he will be screening the doc for Tom Vilsack, and Kenner, Schlosser and Pollan are all optimistic that the new farm bill will go in a new direction. The film is scheduled to open in LA/NY in June, then expand.

Big River Man is my favorite kind of doc - a profile of a truly bizarre individual. In this case it is the story of Martin Strel, who director John Maringouin described as "an overweight drunk who just happens to be the greatest distance swimmer in the world." The film follows Strel and his media hungry son as Strel attempts to swim the entire Amazon river. What follows is very funny and utterly bizarre.

I also caught O'er the Land, a non-narrative film with some fascinating moments, though also many of the characteristics that turn me off from these type of films. It screened with Bitch Academy, a Russian short about a school in St. Petersburg where women, many of them educated and successful, learn to dress sexy and behave in ways that will make men give them money. It moves from funny to sickening and back, crossing many lines of sexuality, dignity, identity, etc. But by never showing the women or the egomaniacal male instructor outside the classroom environment, it also lacks a certain context.

Bitch Academy has apparently also screened under the English title "Vixen Academy," making it this year's winner of the Indie Doc Which Most Sounds Like a Russ Meyer Film Award.