Event

Lunch Line film screening-Environmental Film Festival

Lunch Line film screening-Environmental Film Festival

Dir: Michael Graziano/Ernie Park / 2011 / US / 63 min / High Definition Digital

Nowadays most of us take school lunch programs for granted in public schools, but it hasn't always been that way. Providing hot lunches more widely to children at school was among the array of reforms that came in the wake of World War II, this one based on the link between a solid nutritional foundation and learning. This documentary uses archival footage and photos along with original animation to map out the history of the National School Lunch Program, which began in 1946 and presently feeds more than 31 million children every day. School lunch programs actually bring unique focus to a whole constellation of political issues: public education, food service, a social safety net, and nutrition. Each has the potential to suddenly become a hot-button source of contention within and across the political spectrum, let alone when they are combined. The historical perspective here lights on key moments in the struggle to eradicate childhood hunger from the '40s, '60s, and '80s, as well as presently, and it also takes a look at some of the extraordinary and difficult political maneuvering that has accompanied the effort as wellalong the way the twists and turns are fascinating.