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In 2007, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis created an amazing documentary called King Corn. They bought an acre of land, planted it with corn, did some research and tried to follow “their” corn into the food supply. They learned a lot during the process, and shared with us the staggering facts via some very cool stop-motion photography using among other things, a Fisher Price Little People farm set. (I loved that as a child!) I reviewed that movie here. The scene where they try to make high fructose corn syrup in the kitchen will stick in my mind for many years.

Well, Ian and Curt are back. This time, they are looking at what happens to the surrounding environment when “their acre” is planted, cultivated and harvested. It’s called Big River: A King Corn Companion. You can watch the trailer by clicking the link. You can order DVDs on the site, or attend a screening this spring. Here’s a blurb from their literature:

Big River is a follow-up to the Peabody Award-winning documentary King Corn. That film, which aired on PBS and played in theaters across the country, told the story of two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that enabled a fast food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the East Coast, moved to the heartland to learn where food came from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, and powerful herbicides, they planted and grew a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when Ian and Curt tried to follow their harvest into the food system, what they found raised troubling questions about what we subsidize, and how we eat.

In Big River, Ian and Curt return to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has sent on to the people and places downstream. In a journey that spans from the heartland to the Gulf of Mexico, the two friends 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. Big River is 30 minutes in length. Visit www.bigriverfilm.com to see the trailer.

I am very excited about this new film and can’t wait to see it for myself. It looks like it has the same humor and educational value as King Corn. I’ll be back with my review once I get to see it.