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Feb 1 - Viewing of the film King Corn King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil, but when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat--and how we farm." King Corn was shot over the course of 2004 and 2005. The narrative is rooted in the rural town of Greene, Iowa (pop. 1015), where Ian and Curt grew their acre of corn. Director and Producer Aaron Woolf lived in Iowa with Curt and Ian throughout that time, and the team traveled to 30 states and Mexico on the trail of corn. King Corn was shot in 24p on the Panasonic SDX900 and edited in Iowa, New York and Boston on FinalCut Pro. Additional footage was assembled from the National Archives, Ellis and Cheney home movies, and ample amounts of Super8. Funding for the film came from foundations, individuals, and the ITVS Open Call fund of the CPB. King Corn is being broadcast nationally in the 2007-2008 season of the PBS series Independent Lens. |