“The Ants & the Grasshopper" at the Figge Art Museum -- February 6.
Sunday, February 6, 2 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
An intimate yet sprawling work selected as an official entry in the Mountain Film Festival and the Sheffield Docfest, directors Raj Patel's and Zek Piper's The Ants & the Grasshopper serves as the latest presentation in River Action's QC Environmental Film Series, its February 6 premiere at Davenport's Figge Art Museum set to explore how, according to The Guardian, “power and privilege shape climate justice and food justice from Africa to America – and how we might move forward together."
In The Ants & the Grasshopper, the documentary's central figure Anita Chitaya has numerous gifts: She can help bring abundant food from dead soil; she can make men fight for gender equality; and she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real. Traveling from Malawi to California to the White House, Chitaya meets individuals ranging from climate skeptics to despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions shaping the United States, from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, to the thinking that allows Americans to believe they live on a different planet from everyone else. And as this remarkable documentary progresses, it will take all of Chitaya's skill and experience to help Americans recognize, and free themselves from, a logic that is already destroying the Earth.
A impassioned work 10 years in the making, The Ants & the Grasshopper weaves together the most urgent themes of our times: climate change; gender and racial inequality; the gaps between the rich and the poor; and the ideas that concerned groups around the world have generated in order to help save the planet. Co-director Raj Patel is a James Beard Award-winning activist and New York Times bestselling author. He has testified about food and hunger to the U.S., U.K., and European governments, and his book on the global food system, Stuffed & Starved, has been translated into a dozen language. Co-director Zak Piper, meanwhile, is an Emmy- and Producers Guild Award-winning documentarian best known for producing the critically acclaimed Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself. Piper also co-produced the acclaimed film The Interrupters, hailed as one of the year's best by The New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune, and his co-production At the Death House Door was shortlisted for the Academy Awards.
The Ants & the Grasshopper will be presented at the Figge Art Museum at 2 p.m. on February 6, admission is $5, and more information on the QC Environmental Film Series is available by calling (563)322-2969 and visiting RiverAction.org.
