Bananas

The adorable little VW helps its owners break up a counterfeiting ring in Mexico.

A detective searches for the perfect sweater.

um... er.. it's about... bananas i guess.

For consumers, bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.

Juan “Accidentes” Dominguez is on his biggest case ever. On behalf of twelve Nicaraguan banana workers he is tackling Dole Food in a ground-breaking legal battle for their use of a banned pesticide that was known by the company to cause sterility. Can he beat the giant, or will the corporation get away with it?

A propaganda short commissioned by the United Fruit Company on the benefits they bring to Central America, such as creating jobs and delivering educational opportunities, which is something the Soviet Union could never understand.

Within a banana plantation and a botanic garden, a panel of botanic experts are challenged to discuss contemporary trends in gardening, scientific classification, and monocultural crops by an astute interviewer. The hidden politics of the experts’ positions are uncomfortably exposed and confronted with reality, as they render themselves suspicious of their own language.

Why is the price of a banana from Central America only a third of that of an apple from Michigan? This documentary attempts to answer that question by examining the supply chain between Central America and the US, and uncovering the violence that has enabled the banana industry for more than a century.

Marion and Jack try to rekindle their relationship with a visit to Paris, home of Marion's parents — and several of her ex-boyfriends.