This screening is part of Middlebury New Filmmakers’ Winter Tour. The Burlington screening is organized and hosted by VTIFF.
Note: The theater will have a reduced capacity, so we recommend you book your tickets in advance. Walk-up sales only if space allows.
What do we owe each other in the face of an existential crisis like the climate emergency? That’s one big question at the heart of The Ants and the Grasshopper, a recently released documentary exploring how power and privilege shape climate justice and food justice from Africa to America – and how we might move forward together.
Anita Chitaya has a gift; 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, she meets climate skeptics and despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions shaping the US, from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, to the thinking that allows Americans to believe we live on a different planet from everyone else. It will take all her skill and experience to persuade us that we’re all in this together. This documentary, ten years in the making, 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 groups around the world have generated in order to save the planet.
Director Bios
Raj Patel
Raj Patel (co-director/producer) is a James Beard Award winning activist and New York Times bestselling writer. He has testified about food and hunger to the US, UK and EU governments, and his book on the food system, Stuffed and Starved, has been translated into a dozen languages. He worked for the World Bank and WTO and was tear-gassed on four continents protesting against them. His academic career spans Oxford, the London School of Economics, Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley where he taught with Michael Pollan. He is currently a research professor at Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin.
Zak Piper
Zak Piper (co-director/producer) is an Emmy-winning and Producers Guild Award-winning documentary filmmaker most known for producing the critically acclaimed film Life Itself, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and later won a Critics Choice Award. Zak also co-produced the acclaimed film The Interrupters, which was hailed as one of the year’s best films by The New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, and LA Times. Prior to these films, Zak co-produced At the Death House Door, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Awards. Zak is currently producing or directing a number of documentary projects in development or production.
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VTIFF’s chief concern is the safety of the audience and VTIFF staff. Proof of vaccination will be required at the door. Proof can either be a physical card or a digital version on your phone. Masking indoors is mandatory. Thank you.
