Extension rep, farmers and a film at the Center Theatre next week

DOVER-FOXCROFT — The last of a trio of films from the Sierra Club is showing at Center Theatre at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 15. The 56-minute “The Global Banquet, Politics of Food,” “exposes globalization’s profoundly damaging effect on our food system in terms that are understandable to the non-specialist.” The documentary aims to debunk myths about global hunger, including: that hunger results from scarcity; that small countries don’t know how to feed themselves; and that only market-driven, chemically-based industrial agriculture can feed the world.

This film “reveals how agribusiness squeezes out small farmers and how trade liberalization undercuts subsistence farming in the U.S., as well as in the developing world. It demonstrates how food security is linked to social development and how women, in particular, are affected by that. And it links factory farming and the alteration and patenting of life forms to degradation of the natural environment.”

Through interviews with farmers, policy analysts and international activists, The Global Banquet examines, “the ethical questions at the heart of the globalization debate. Beyond that, it shows how farmers, laborers, environmentalists, animal-rights activists, church groups, and students – worldwide – are mobilizing to address the situation.”

This film, along with More Than Honey, and National Parks Adventure, which both showed earlier this fall, is brought to the area in cooperation with the Maine Sierra Club. “Local, sustainable food is becoming more and more important with every passing year,” said Patrick Myers, executive director of the Center Theatre. “I am pleased that we are able to bring this film to Dover-Foxcroft with the help of the Sierra Club and our local partners.”

Trisha Smith, home horticulture aide with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s Piscataquis County office, will have a table set up in the theater lobby prior to the show, and will be handing out, “Maine Food System swag bags,” while supplies last. Leaves and Blooms Greenhouse will be selling donuts in the lobby. Other local farmers have been invited to provide information and handouts, and to have displays in the lobby that evening, but no other plans were set at press time.

The Center Theatre is a nonprofit performing arts center dedicated to making the arts a part of life in the Maine Highlands. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Center Theatre reopening its doors to produce affordable entertainment, arts and education. 

For more information on the theater or its programming, call the Center Theatre at 564-8943, stop by the 20 East Main Street location between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays or visit www.centertheatre.org.

For details about farm displays in the lobby, contact Smith at 564-3301 or trisha.smith1@maine.edu.