Following up on their Peabody-winning documentary, the King Corn boys are back. Check out their latest documentary, Big River, on Saturday, July 9 at Ocean Night, a monthly movie event sponsored by Humboldt Surfrider, Ocean Conservancy and Humboldt Baykeeper.
Best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis have returned to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has sent to the people and places downstream. In a journey that spans from the heartland to the Gulf of Mexico, Ian and Curt trade their combine for a canoe - and set out to see the big world their little acre of corn has touched.
On their trip, flashbacks to the pesticides they sprayed, the fertilizers they injected and the soil they plowed now lead to new questions, explored by new experts in new places. Half of Iowa's topsoil, they learn, has been washed out to sea. Fertilizer runoff has spawned a hypoxic "dead zone" in the Gulf. And back at their acre, the herbicides they used are blamed for a cancer cluster that reaches all too close to home. (Run time: 27 minutes.)
Also showing, Rob Machado's Melali. While wandering through Indonesia filming the award-winning surf movie The Drifter, Machado, one of the most stylish and skilled wave riders of our time, met up with various friends for surf sessions on the best waves the islands had to offer. Melali returns to the fundamentals of surf cinematography by focusing on the surfing experience, the artful relationship between man and surf, and the sharing of this experience with good friends.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xPsoj8jWLI]
Joining Machado at the finest surfing locales Indonesia has to offer are Dane Reynolds, Kelly Slater, Kalani Robb, Shane Dorian, Dan Malloy, Mike Losness, Marlon Gerber and Rizal Tanjung.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Films start at 7 p.m.
Ocean Night is all ages with a $3 donation requested and a raffle held between movies. For more information, see surfrider.org/humboldt or humboldtbaykeeper.org.