Coming to theatres today, Friday, November 21: FOOD CHAINS
Sanjay Rawal’s exposé of exploited migrant farmworkers had its world premiere at Berlin at the beginning of the year. It went on to screen at Tribeca, Guadalajara, Vancouver, Minneapolis St Paul, and Napa Valley.
Making a strong argument that today’s migrant farmworkers, like those organized by Cesar Chavez in the 1950s and ’60s, are not much better off, Rawal’s film likens them to slave labor in a system controlled by large corporations. The ostensible focus here is on the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a union of Florida tomato pickers who stage a hunger strike to get the attention of powerful supermarket chain Publix. While other corporate entities have signed on to CIW’s Fair Food Program, which modestly asks for farmworkers to be paid a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked, Publix views the issue as a labor dispute and refuses to come to the bargaining table. While Rawal uses this standoff as the backbone of his film, it’s a bit unsatisfying, as the hunger strike ultimately fails. Still, the workers serve as a sympathetic point of identification for the viewer, and their plight forces us all to take stock of who suffers when we benefit from lower food costs.
what (not) to doc 