Movies: Ian Cheney

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash o...

A documentary that looks at systemic sexism faced by women scientists in STEM fields....

An epic documentary film that sends nine scientists to extraordinary parts of the world to uncover unexpected answers to some of humanity’s biggest questions. How did life begin? What is time? What is consciousness? How much do we really know? By in...

"The Arc of Oblivion" explores a quirk of humankind: in a universe that erases its tracks, we humans are hellbent on leaving a trace. Set against the backdrop of the filmmaker's quixotic quest to build an ark in a field in Maine, the film heads far a...

Armed with a camcorder, farmer-filmmaker-activist Severine von Tscharner Fleming spent two years crisscrossing America, meeting and mobilizing a network of revolutionary young farmers resettling the land. 'The Greenhorns' is an ode to their grit and ...

Quirky and contemplative, this delectable documentary takes us on a surprising global odyssey into the world of cheese, drawing unexpected parallels between the aging of cheese and the human experience of growing old....

BLUESPACE explores the terraforming of Mars and the waterways of New York City. As scientists develop strategies for warming and colonizing the frigid red planet, waterfront dwellers here on Earth grapple with the legacies of pollution and the specte...

Emojis are a worldwide phenomenon, with some arguing that these smiling poops and heart-eyed faces are on the verge of actually becoming their own language. Who, if anyone, is in charge of this new global digital language?...

American political economist, professor, author, and social media sensation Robert Reich teaches his final "Wealth and Poverty" class to 1,000 students at UC Berkeley, ending a 40-year career that reached 40,000 students. One thousand fill the bigges...

From New York City to the farmlands of the Midwest, there are 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., yet one dish in particular has conquered the American culinary landscape with a force befitting its military moniker—“General Tso’s Chicken.” But wh...

From wheatboard cabinetry to recycled steel, bamboo flooring to dual-flush toilets, these Boston tough guy construction workers get a crash course in what it means to be "environmentally conscious". And when things on the building star to go wrong, t...

Deep in the hills of Appalachia live a mysterious tri-racial people known as Melungeons. For years, the community around Vardy Valley in northeastern Tennessee suffered discrimination and marginalization because of their mixed-race heritage; many lef...

The future was now at the 1939 World’s Fair – and it is still awesome. From the perspective of the 21st century, it’s hard to imagine what a marvel the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair would have been to its visitors. Still living in the heavy shadow ...

Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis have traded their combine for a canoe, and they're setting out to uncover the ecological consequences their little acre of corn sent into the 'Big River' downstream....

Can we observe the world without affecting it? An adventure in eight chapters from around the world where a group of professional scientists taking part in a playful, philosophical experiment....

A whimsical, musically-narrated, documentary film about urban agriculture....

We were never supposed to know her name. She was a poor Irish immigrant who survived famine and war, fire and plague. Unable to save her husband or their four small children, she dedicated her life to saving working families everywhere. The robber ba...

The Smog of the Sea chronicles a 1-week journey through the remote waters of the Sargasso Sea. Marine scientist Marcus Eriksen invited onboard an unusual crew to help him study the sea: renowned surfers Keith & Dan Malloy, musician Jack Johnson, ...

When filmmaker Ian Cheney moves to New York City and discovers skies almost completely devoid of stars, a simple question – what do we lose, when we lose the night? – spawns a journey to America's brightest and darkest corners. Astronomers, cancer re...

A series of lyrical vignettes illuminates the stories of Maine's seafolk, those whose lives and livelihoods are inextricably connected to the ocean. This atmospheric film shows the beauty, intimacy, and uncertainty that coastal dwellers face in rooti...