With 2009 marking the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his On the Origin of Species, the Townsend Center’s Depth of Field series featured three films in fall 2009 that look at the issue of human and environmental change from a variety of perspectives. Ranging from the dusty deserts of Texas through the mountainous rivers of China to the icy plains of Antarctica, Adaptology offered peculiarly local accounts of human adaptation and their global implications. Continuing the program’s Darwinian-inspired exploration of humans and their environment, the spring films turned from the social to the personal by examining the most basic elements of our individual survival: food and drink.
Films in the Series:
Natural Selections on Humans & the Environment
Up the Yangtze (2007)
Directed by Yung Chang
The Unforeseen (2007)
Directed by Laura Dunn
Encounters at the End of the World (2008)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Films of Food & Drink
Food, Inc. (2009)
Directed by Robert Kenner
Flow: For Love of Water (2008)
Directed by Irena Selina
Mondovino (2004)
Directed by Jonathan Nossiter
Curated by Kris Fallon, graduate student in the Film Studies department at UC Berkeley.