Príbeh Jána Kováča

Γάζωρος Σερρών

Nos prairies valent de l'or

Nearly 2, 00, 000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years. But the mainstream media hardly reflects this. Nero´s Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of Hindu newspaper, P Sainath. Through sustained coverage of the farm crisis, Sainath and his colleagues created the national agenda, compelling a government in denial to take notice and act. Through his writings and lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we don’t want to see, and provokes us to think about who ‘Nero’s Guests’ are in today’s world.

A film about the importance of heirloom seeds to the agriculture of the world, focusing on seed keepers and activists from around the world.

Early Balkan footage.

How did it come about that we no longer see living beings in farm animals, but objects? Every year, 70 billion farm animals are slaughtered for consumption around the world. 80 percent are kept on large farms. They live crammed together in overcrowded stables, are fattened and finally slaughtered without ever having been in nature. In less than two generations, intensive husbandry has become established worldwide. Researches in Poland, the USA, Germany and Vietnam gets to the bottom of the system and those responsible. The meat industry is subsidized by the state. Corporations, governments and consumers tacitly support a deregulated and dehumanized economic system that makes unlimited consumption of animal products the norm - and with it, animal cruelty. The documentary film describes the triumph of industrial agriculture, in which the animal has to endure unimaginable suffering, becomes a commodity, a raw material that is always available and can be slaughtered and processed at will.

The rhythms of a typical day during the summer wheat harvest in Kansas.

Together, the three Bertrand brothers work their farm in a small Savoyard village. In 1972, they took the enormous risk to invest in the construction of an ultra modern stable for 82 milk cows. With modern organisation, they hoped to lead a better life. Almost 30 years later, the farm is successful. Their work is meticulous and the milk is graded top quality. The human cost is much more sombre. Indeed these thirty years can be summarised in one word : work. The brothers are bachelors and – each one now over sixty years old – a bitterness when they recall their past. The younger brother says it himself: "It's an economic success, but it's a human failure...".

Is your hedge thin and straggly? Don't worry, help is at hand.

The people, the scenery and the industrial traditions of the Stroud valley and the growth of the woollen industry.

The cultivation of flax, long and complicated, requires constant precautions and care. This document describes the different stages of this culture, from tillage and fertilization of the soil to uprooting, retting, braying, stacking, retting and, finally, shipping to the factory.

How safe is the future of the world’s food? This documentary explores a growing crisis in world agriculture. Plant breeding has created today’s crops, which are high yielding but vulnerable to disease and insects. To keep crops healthy, breeders tap all the genetic diversity of the world’s food plants. But that rich resource is quickly being wiped out. (NFB)

This short documentary offers a humorous look at horse-pulling contests in Ontario and the people who prepare for them. We travel from the farm to the contest, where excitement runs high and the quips do not lack in local colour. Which of these magnificent creatures will be able to pull the heaviest load and win the prize?

The agriculture reforming process, after the 1974 revolution, is seen through an analysis of the social structures and class struggles of the Portuguese society.

Jean-Luc Godard brings his firebrand political cinema to the UK, exploring the revolutionary signals in late '60s British society. Constructed as a montage of various disconnected political acts (in line with Godard's then appropriation of Soviet director Dziga Vertov's agitprop techniques), it combines a diverse range of footage, from students discussing The Beatles to the production line at the MG factory in Oxfordshire, burnished with onscreen political sloganeering.

A look at man's relationship with Dirt. Dirt has given us food, shelter, fuel, medicine, ceramics, flowers, cosmetics and color --everything needed for our survival. For most of the last ten thousand years we humans understood our intimate bond with dirt and the rest of nature. We took care of the soils that took care of us. But, over time, we lost that connection. We turned dirt into something "dirty." In doing so, we transform the skin of the earth into a hellish and dangerous landscape for all life on earth. A millennial shift in consciousness about the environment offers a beacon of hope - and practical solutions.

Devastation of a Welsh-speaking community: Capel Celyn village and farms of the Tryweryn Valley disappear beneath the waters of a reservoir so Liverpool’s thirst may be slaked.

Concerned about the declining health of people all around them, Native American women are sparking physical and spiritual rejuvenation through reclaiming traditional foodways.

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

The philanthropic foundation set up by US billionaire Bill Gates quietly co-finances experiments with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in several African countries. In the age of philanthropic capitalism, billionaires "save the world" and make money in the process. But who is helped the most, ordinary Africans or the food industry?