Fixing Food 20 Oct 2022, 6:11 pm

To many of us, climate change is remote, abstract, too grim to consider, too far removed from our daily lives.  

But we now know that one of the biggest triggers for global warming is something all of us do every day: eating.   

Growing and processing food, and packaging and bringing it to us — all use enormous amounts of energy, water, and chemicals, creating an overwhelming burden on our planet’s resources. And, remarkably, Americans throw out nearly half of the food we produce. More than 62 million tons of food every year ends up rotting in landfills, releasing poisonous methane into the air and further fueling the increases in global warming.

Fortunately, across the country, intrepid innovators are recognizing and exploring solutions to the problems of growing our nation’s food while responding to climate change.  

FIXING FOOD tells stories of people who are working to lower our carbon footprint with impactful new ways to gather and prepare the food we need.  The series looks at five important areas where we can make changes — farming in the ocean and the air, finding new food sources, learning from Indigenous agriculture, and rescuing the food we already have.

Their stories challenge us all: If we change the way we eat, can we save our planet?

The 3 Cricketeers

The 3 Cricketeers tells the story of a Minnesota farm family working on the frontier of urban agriculture, trying to do their part in the climate crisis by raising environmentally friendly, protein-rich crickets and turning them into cookies, treats and tortillas.

NATIVE TABLE

At their Minneapolis restaurant Owamni, Chef Sean Sherman (Lakota Sioux) and business partner Dana Thomson (Dakota) are exploring their Native cultural heritages by re-creating pre-colonial menus — meals that use no dairy, no wheat, no sugar — and showing that by combining the past with the best in modern farming practices, we can create more sustainable and ethical food systems.

THE RESCUE BRIGADE

When Leah Lizarondo learned that over 40% of America’s surplus food is wasted every year, she created an app — and a small army of volunteers — to bring that food to the people who need it.

Harvesting the Sea

Economist Briana Warner thinks she’s found a solution to rising ocean temperatures, and a way to keep Maine’s local lobster fishermen employed — kelp farming.

Farming the Sky

To cut down on food transportation emissions, architect Nona Yehia designed a new kind of greenhouse: a building that would pack a perfectly controlled growing environment into a space built up vertically on a sliver of town land.

FIXING FOOD 2

Food From the Air

Lisa Dyson is the founder and CEO of Air Protein, a company driven by ambitions almost as vast as space itself. As the 4th African American woman ever to earn a doctorate in physics, Lisa is well-equipped to take on its extraordinary mission: to create food from pure elements of the air.

Seeds of Resilience

“Seeds of Resilience” explores the remarkable strength of indigenous Mayan communities and their enduring connection to a crop the Spanish conquistadors tried to wipe out — amaranth, a tall leafy grain long derided in the United States as “pigweed.

Native Roots

This inspiring video tells the story of Shyla Sheppard, the first Native American woman to own a brewery. Shyla draws from her family heritage, creating unique, authentic flavors by infusing her beers with traditional indigenous ingredients — blue corn, prickly pear, and rare, long-forgotten plants like the only hops indigenous to North America. Shyla is not only breaking barriers but showing that the tribal environmental knowledge she was raised with was, in fact, “true” science.

Healing the Land

“Healing the Land” follows six months of animal life on Wild Harmony Farm, a 40-acre organic livestock spread run by Rachael Slattery and her husband Ben. They and a growing number of other young farmers today feel they have inherited tired land, land that has been overused and abused for generations, and their job is to restore it. Rather than follow conventional industrial agriculture practices that rely on pesticides, herbicides and animals raised in warehouses, the couple practices regenerative farming, prioritizing soil health, biodiversity, and healthy livestock raised outdoors.

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Denise Ho – Becoming the Song 17 Sep 2020, 5:53 pm

Denise Ho – Becoming the Song profiles the openly gay Hong Kong singer and human rights activist Denise Ho. Drawing on unprecedented, years-long access, the film explores her remarkable journey from commercial Cantopop superstar to outspoken political activist, an artist who has put her life and career on the line to support the determined struggle of Hong Kong citizens to maintain their identity and freedom.

Denise’s story mirrors almost perfectly the last three decades of Hong Kong’s uneasy relationship with China. A top international recording artist in Hong Kong and across China and other Asian nations, the turning point in her career came during the seminal moment of change for Hong Kong, the Umbrella Movement of 2014. Her public support of students who demanded free elections and occupied central Hong Kong for nearly three months had immediate and lasting consequences: she was arrested and then blacklisted by China.

Under pressure, sponsors dropped Denise and venues refused to let her perform. The film follows Denise on the road as she tours the U.S., Canada and UK and prepares to release a new hit song, attempting to rebuild her career. But it soon became clear she is also reflecting on her life’s trajectory. In June 2019, Hong Kong exploded in anti-extradition law protests with millions taking to the streets, and Denise once again faced a turning point. She has been in the streets with the tear gas and water cannons. She has tried to mediate for and protect the protesters. She has addressed the United Nations and U.S. Congress to explain the crisis and plead for international help, making it clear that Hong Kong’s struggle is a desperate fight for basic freedom and democracy around the world.

As the film draws to a close, the fight for Hong Kong continues…

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Death By Design 12 Jun 2017, 6:41 pm

Consumers love – and live on – their smartphones, tablets and laptops. A cascade of new devices pours endlessly into the market, promising even better communication, non-stop entertainment and instant information. The numbers are staggering. By 2020, four billion people will have a personal computer. Five billion will own a mobile phone.

But this revolution has a dark side that the electronics industry doesn’t want you to see. In an investigation that spans the globe, Ambrica investigates the underbelly of the international electronics industry and reveals how even the tiniest devices have deadly environmental and health costs.

DEATH BY DESIGN tells the stories of young Chinese workers laboring in unsafe conditions, American families living with the tragic consequences of the industry’s toxic practices, activists leading the charge to hold brands accountable, and passionate entrepreneurs who are developing more sustainable products and practices to safeguard our planet and our future.

From the intensely secretive electronics factories in China, to the high tech innovation labs of Silicon Valley, Death by Design tells a story of environmental degradation, of health tragedies, and the fast-approaching tipping point between consumerism and sustainability.

Go to DeathByDesignFilm.com to find more information on the issues, shocking facts and tips on how to make your devices last longer.

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The Story Exchange 2 Jun 2017, 6:43 pm

The Story Exchange is an award-winning nonprofit media organization dedicated to elevating women’s voices. Through videos, articles and a podcast, we strive to provide inspiration and information to entrepreneurial women everywhere.

As an independent 501(c)(3) newsroom founded in 2011, we have partnered with numerous publications over the years to expand our reach, including The New York Times, Inc., Forbes, CNBC and Fast Company.

In 2021, we launched our annual Women In Science Incentive Prize — a grant program recognizing innovative female scientists addressing climate change.

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China: A Century of Revolution 1 Jun 2017, 6:41 pm

In 1986 Ambrica Productions began China: A Century of Revolution, a series of three feature-length documentaries that explore the turbulent history of 20th century China.

The first film, China in Revolution, describes the epic upheaval that began in China with the fall of the last emperor in 1911. Over the next four decades, the Chinese people were caught up in struggles with warlords, foreign invasion and a bitter rivalry between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party. The film highlights the two figures who came to shape events, Chang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. First they worked as allies to unite the country and then they fought a bloody civil war that was won by the Communists in 1949.

The trilogy continues with The Mao Years, a look at the next period of modern China’s history: Mao Zedong’s rule, from 1949 to his death in 1976. The film begins with the celebrations marking the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, a moment of great hope for millions of Chinese. But the quarter-century of Mao’s rule was as turbulent as the decades which preceded it. Interludes of relative calm and increased prosperity were interrupted repeatedly by violent campaigns, purges, and a famine in which killed more than 30 million people. It culminated in Mao’s colossal and tragic experiment, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. When Mao died in 1976, people were exhausted by the turmoil and longed for stability.

What happened next could never have been anticipated and forms the story line for the final film of the trilogy; Born Under The Red Flag examines China’s remarkable transformation after Mao’s death. In just 15 years, under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, China raced forward at an astonishing pace to become a never-before-seen hybrid of communism and capitalism. The world’s most populous nation has reinvented itself, changing from a relatively undeveloped and isolated nation into an economic giant and a major international power. For many Chinese, this transformation has brought unprecedented prosperity, but it has also raised troubling questions of national identity and social inequality.

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Young & Restless in China 12 May 2017, 6:42 pm

Starting in 2004 Ambrica began filming nine Chinese Gen X’ers at home and at work, returning once a year to record the changes in their lives. The film tracks four wildly ambitious graduates, a media savvy hip hop artist, two migrant workers living precariously on society’s edge, a dedicated medical resident and a courageous environmental activist.

What happens along the way is surprising: some find themselves torn between traditional culture and tantalizing new opportunities; several begin the heady ride to wealth and power. Some find love and resolve family conflicts, and others seem likely to crash and burn along the way.

Young & Restless in China is buoyed by a driving sound track of Chinese rock and hip-hop music and scenes of Chinese life rarely seen in the West. As we watch these young people work, hang out with family and friends, sing karaoke or launch their first business, we come to know them in a rare, intimate way. Their stories of ambition, exuberance, crime and corruption are interwoven with moments of love, heartbreak and passion.  In riveting emotional detail, Young & Restless in China captures the highs and lows of coming of age that are at times intimately familiar and also decidedly new.

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Eleanor Roosevelt 12 Apr 2017, 6:41 pm

For more than thirty years, Eleanor Roosevelt was America’s most powerful woman, yet few really knew her. Born to wealth and power, her private life was marked by tragedy, infidelity and a never-ending search for intimacy.

This biography includes rare home movies, contemporary footage and reflections from Eleanor’s closest surviving relatives, as well as biographers Blanche Wiesen Cook, Allida Black and Geoffrey C. Ward, bringing to vibrant life one of the century’s most influential women.

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China in the Red 12 Mar 2017, 6:42 pm

Shot over four years, from 1998 to 2001, China in the Red explores the changing values and expectations of ten individuals as they struggle to adapt to China’s economic reforms. In intimate portraits, the film shows a cross section of Chinese society: young and old, rural and urban, workers and peasants—from the manager of a failing factory to the mayor of a major city, from a millionaire entrepreneur to a peasant dying for lack of medical care. China in the Red premiered on PBS in February 2003 with critical acclaim.

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Mary Pickford 28 Feb 2017, 6:35 pm

Mary Pickford is a poignant portrait of the world’s first international superstar. Pickford’s extraordinary career as the most popular silent screen actress of the day made her the most powerful woman in the history of movies and helped shape America’s obsessive culture of celebrity.

In the golden age of silent film, the world’s most celebrated actress was Mary Pickford. Known as “America’s Sweetheart,” she was famous for playing darling girls and feisty young women in wildly popular films seen around the globe. Her love affair with Hollywood’s leading man, Douglas Fairbanks, turned her into an icon of glamour and romance, the living image of the Hollywood dream. But Mary would learn, in the most painful way, that life at the top is precarious and fame is fickle.

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Time of Fear 28 Jan 2017, 6:38 pm

In World War II, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were forced to leave their homes and relocate to military camps dotted across the western United State Time of Fear tells the story of the 16,000 men, women and children who were sent to two camps in southeast Arkansas, one of the poorest and most racially segregated places in America.

It explores the reactions of the native Arkansans who watched in bewilderment as their tiny towns were overwhelmed by this huge influx of outsiders. Played out in a remote corner of the south, this is a forgotten chapter in America’s unfinished struggle with race that resonates strongly today.

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