Film Description: Cafeteria Man takes a behind the scenes look at Tony Geraci’s sweeping, tenacious efforts to kick start school lunch reform in Baltimore’s schools, a large urban district that serves 83,000 students, and later in Memphis schools, with 200,000 kids. As the newly hired Food and Nutrition Director of the Baltimore’s public school district, Geraci hatches an ambitious, multi-faceted plan to feed students healthy, locally-sourced meals, teach them nutritional awareness, and offer them training and vocational opportunities in the world of food. His bold vision includes a 33-acre teaching farm, school vegetable gardens, student-designed meals, and meatless Monday’s. Cafeteria Man follows Geraci as he partners with a dedicated group of parents and students to overhaul a long-established, dysfunctional lunch program and battle the entrenched bureaucracy behind it. The film profiles Baltimore’s experience as it becomes recognized as part a burgeoning national movement, and includes appearances by food author Michael Pollan, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Assistant White House Chef Sam Kass.
Every Little Thing
Film Description: The documentary about a Los Angeles woman who has made it her life’s mission to rehabilitate injured hummingbirds has a gentle sweetness that feels like a balm. Terry Masear, the subject of writer-director Sally Aitken’s film, has a no-nonsense demeanor, but her affection for these tiny creatures is unmistakable. She gives them names like Raisin, Cactus and Wasabi. She assigns them narratives as she observes their behavior. She painstakingly builds them elaborate aviaries and lovingly feeds them from a syringe. And she devotes every inch of her sprawling Hollywood Hills property, inside and out, to their care.