Bitter Seeds is the final film in Micha X. Peled’s Globalization Trilogy, following Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town and China Blue. The films won 18 international awards, aired on over 30 television ...
Spotlight
BITTER SEEDS WINS TWICE AT IDFA
Nov. 25, 2011 — Amsterdam
Bitter Seeds won the Green Screen competition Award at IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. Fifteen films competed, of which three were nominated. Earlier, the film had won the Oxfam Global Justice Award (see below).
The competition jury president, Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost), read out the jury’s the reasons for the award:
One film in particular stood out for its skillfulness in weaving together an economic, agricultural and sociological narrative, but above all in telling a number of different human stories. It showed us struggle, but also a possible way of escape. It added up to so much more than the sum of its parts. It was masterful, cinematically rich and it totally grabbed us in the guts. That film is… Bitter Seeds by Micha X. Peled. A deeply affecting, character-driven film exposing the issues surrounding a rash of farmer suicides in India, BITTER SEEDS masterfully weaves a rich tapestry of compelling human stories and subplots, that allows you to enter a world that is both personal and profound.
Read more on the IDFA website…
Latest News
- Bitter Seeds to Travel to Festivals Around the World
Jan. 2011
We can now confirm participation in:
Human Rights Watch Film Festival – London, Mar. 21-24; our screenings are co-sponsored by the Sheffield Film Festival
One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival – Prague, Mar. 6-15
Cinema Novo Festival – Brugge, Mar. 8-18
Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival - Mar. 9-18
Movies That Matters Film Festival – The Hague, Mar. 25-28
It’s All True Documentary Film Festival – Sao Paolo and Rio, Mar. 25 – Apr. 1
Hong Kong International Film Festival – Mar 21 – Apr. 5
Istanbul International Film Festival – Apr. 10 – 15
Micha X. Peled is expected to attend the festivals in London, Brazil and Istanbul.
-
Bitter Seeds Wins Oxfam Global Justice Award
Nov. 24, 2011 – Amsterdam
Bitter Seeds is the winner of the Oxfam Global Justice Award. Audience votes at the IDFA screenings chose the winner among the prize finalists.
This new award is presented for the documentary that best tells real stories about real people and real change.The key criteria for documentaries to qualify for this award are that they inspire us, address urgent issues, raise questions about these issues, and have the potential of changing lives forever.
With the Oxfam Global Justice Award, Oxfam recognizes the efforts of people struggling to bring developmental justice to the millions of poor and excluded people around the world. Oxfam hopes that the Global Justice Award will help focus the attention on issues of global concern, such as economic, social and environmental sustainability, livelihoods, global fair trade, empowerment, climate change and poverty resolution.
- BITTER SEEDS INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE, IDFA
The International premiere of Bitter Seeds will take place at IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, the 16-27th of November. It will compete in the Green Film competition.
The film was selected (out of over 300 films) for a special OXFAM Novib screening during IDFA on Wednesday, November 23 at 19:30, as the film best addressing issues promoted in the OXFAM Novib’s campaign GROW.
The special screening will take place in IDFA’s largest theater, Tuschinski 1, and will feature an introduction by Thea Hillhorst, Professor of humanitarian aid and reconstruction at Wageningen University and later with a Q&A with the director. For ticket information go to http://www.idfa.nl.
About the film:
Rounding out his “Globalization Trilogy” with another affecting, character-driven portrait designed to indict corporate opportunism, Micha X. Peled exposes the issues underlying a rash of farmer suicides in “Bitter Seeds.” –Variety 9/5/11
Every 30 minutes a farmer in India kills himself in despair. How is it that a hardworking farmer and father arrives at a point in life where the most sensible course of action is to kill himself by drinking a bottle of pesticide? It all makes horrible sense once you understand the forces at work: the tragic intersection of a high-tech industrial agriculture, the global economy and a traditional culture.
Micha Peled’s vivid, rich and deep new documentary Bitter Seeds takes us to an Indian village at the center of the suicide crisis region. It follows over a season a cotton farmer and his family as they struggle to keep their land, and a teenage girl making her first steps to become a journalist and tell the world about the crisis. Bitter Seeds raises critical questions about the human cost of genetically modified agriculture and the future of how we grow things. This is the third film in Micha Peled’s globalization trilogy, following the award-winning Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town and China Blue.
Films like this can change the world. –Alice Waters
A tragedy for our times, beautifully told and deeply disturbing. –Michael Pollan
Better than a Batman movie… with real villains making up their own lines. –Peter Sellars
Emotional, gripping doc. –Variety 9/5/11
“Our previous film, China Blue, also had its European premiere at IDFA,” says the film’s director and producer, Micha X. Peled. “I can’t think of a better European launch. This is an opportunity to thank our funders:
• Ben & Jerry’s Foundation
• Columbia Foundation
• Fleishhacker Foundation
• Funding Exchange
• Park Foundation
• ITVS (Independent Television Service) with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”
-
BITTER SEEDS WORLD PREMIERE, Telluride Film Festival
Sept. 1, 2011 – Telluride USA
- Micha X. Peled on Telluride FF panel with the Dardenne brothers
Alice Waters joins Micha in Q & A following a Bitter Seeds screening
Bitter Seeds was one of the films singled out in an L.A. Times review, and was recommended for theatrical distribution in the Variety review.
In a Telluride Film Festival panel event, Micha Peled explained how the broad issues about the future of agriculture were distilled in Bitter Seeds into the kernel of human experience you see on screen.
Truth is crueler than fiction. It would take a mash-up of Kafka, Capote and Poe to invent the bitter storyline herein: an aspiring young journalist tracks the causes of an epidemic of farmers suicides in India… that includes her own father. —Telluride Film Festival program notes
• China Blue Selected for ITVS 20th Anniversary
Aug. ’11 – USA
ITVS is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The Independent Television Service selected 20 of its 1,000 films that “represent the extraordinary contributions of independent filmmakers to public television.” China Blue is among the 20 films. It will air on the ITVS Indies Showcase August 12-14.
Filmmaker Micha X. Peled reveals behind-the-scenes details about the making of the film in a video clip that is posted on YouTube .
There will also be a live chat with Micha, moderated by PBS NewsHour Correspondent Hari Sreenivasan, this Friday, Aug. 12th at 11PST. For all details, go to http://beyondthebox.org/documentary-china-blue-triggers-live-with-pbs-newshour-and-itvs-on-globalization/
• Bitter Seeds Short-listed for IDFA
July ’11 – Amsterdam
The International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, the world’s premier festival for documentary films, announced that our film, Bitter Seeds, is short-listed for the festival. Final selections will be announced in October.
Bitter Seeds, which follows two families in an Indian village, explores the connection between the farmer’s’ suicide crisis in India and the genetically modified seeds the farmers must use. Currently in post-production, it will be completed by the end of this summer.
• China Blue Austria Deal
Mar. ’11 – Vienna
Teddy Bear Films has just signed an agreement with One World Film Clubs Austria for China Blue to be made available online for educational purposes to Austrian students.
• Lenny Feinstein Hired to Edit Bitter Seeds
Dec. ’10 – Los Angeles
TBF is pleased to announce that we’ve hired editor-extraordinaire Lenny Feinstein to cut the two versions (feature and TV) of Seeds (working title). Work is scheduled to begin next month.
Leonard Feinstein has worked in documentaries for over 30 years. He has edited Emmy award winning programs for National Geographic, Nova, The American Experience, as well as the acclaimed PBS series, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. He was nominated for an American Cinema Editors “Eddie” for the feature documentary Darfur Now, and in 2009 he was awarded an “Eddie” for editing the TV reality series Greensburg. He has frequently collaborated with contemporary artists and has worked on films about Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha, and Twyla Tharp.
• Will My Mother…Revival
July ’10 – Berlin
Micha’s first film, Will My Mother Go Back to Berlin? comes out of the archives to screen July 29 at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. When released in 1993, Will My Mother played to sold out theatres and elicited many letters of support and thankful emotion from German, American, and international viewers. Among other awards, Will My Mother won Best Documentary at the International Hawaii Film Festival and Germany’s prestigious Robert Geisendörfer Preis, making Micha Peled the first non-German to do so. The Los Angeles Times venerable movie critic Charles Champlin called it “a hell of a good movie.”
• Iran TV Pays Up
June ’10 – Iran
Finally, 3 years after doing so, Iran State television IRIB has paid up for airing China Blue. We’re proud to be home to one of the few American filmmakers whose work has shown on Iranian TV.
• Our Films on VOD Germany
June ’10 – Germany
China Blue and Store Wars join the online distribution revolution! Both these films are now available on-line on demand from Germany’s Realeyz .
If you do not live in a supported country, see our DVDs page to find out how to obtain a DVD of any of our films directly from us.
