KING CORN
Cedar Rapids premiere | 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, 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.
The recipient of rave reviews in Variety, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Village Voice. The reviewer for Salon.com writes, "A deceptively intelligent new entry in the regular-Joe documentary genre, King Corn follows two recent Yale graduates as they 'return' to the rural county in Iowa where (by coincidence) both of them have ancestral roots. Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis meet some distant relatives, but also decide to grow a single acre of corn, the Hawkeye State's signature crop, and then follow it as far into the food chain as they can.
"Cheney and Ellis are a virtually indistinguishable pair of post-fraternity fellows in backward Red Sox caps, but the movie they made with director (and Ellis' cousin) Aaron Woolf is a chilling one.
"Propped up by irrational subsidies and massive doses of fertilizer and herbicide, Midwestern corn production reaches new highs almost every year. Most of the golden grain is not going to wholesome summertime dinners but rather into the production of cattle feed and high-fructose corn syrup for soft drinks and other sweetened products. Corn is ubiquitous in the American diet even if you think you're not eating it, and the deranged overproduction of corn instituted in the Nixon era has directly contributed to epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes. Thankfully, this information arrives via a graceful and frequently humorous film that captures the idiosyncrasies of its characters and never hectors."
Note | Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, along with director Aaron Wolfe, will be present at this free screening, and will take questions and attend a reception afterward.
Wed Dec 12 | 7 pm
CSPS | 1103 Third St SE | Cedar Rapids
Free | donations welcome

Note | Admission is free, but to guarantee a seat you can pick up an advance ticket at CSPS starting Weds Dec 5.

Ticket info
Visit the King Corn Web site
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