Two documentaries, including one about children and food politics that premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, will be presented in the next two installments of the SLC Film Center’s Food For Thought series.

“What’s On Your Plate?” will be screened May 7 and “Dirt! The Movie” on May 14, with both free, public presentations at 7 p.m. in the Fort Douglas Post Theater on The University of Utah campus.

“What’s On Your Plate?,” produced and directed by Catherine Gund of Aubin Pictures, chronicles the discovery of a pair of 11-year-old girls from New York City who examine the food chain, going everywhere from fast food restaurants, supermarkets and school lunch rooms to farms, local sustainable markets, and community-supported agriculture groups. They visit restaurants supplied with locally grown food and an upstate New York carrot farmer hoping to sell his local harvest to the New York City Department of Education school lunch program. The documentary concludes with a meal the girls prepare for their classmates.

Gund is an Emmy Award-nominated producer, director, writer and organizer. Her media work – which focuses on arts and culture, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health, and other social justice issues – has screened around the world in festivals and theaters, on PBS and the Sundance Channel, at community-based organizations, universities, and museums. The film has been enthusiastically endorsed by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame and Ann Cooper, chef and author of Lunch Lessons: Changing The Way We Feed Our Children.

“Dirt! The Movie,” which was premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, was inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book, “Dirt, The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth.” The film, produced and directed by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow, features many notable personalities including Logan, Alice Waters, photographer Sebastiao Salgado, Andy Lipkis, founder and president of TreePeople; Vandana Shiva, physicist and environmental activist; Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Green Belt Movement; Wes Jackson, president of The Land Institute, and many other scientists and activists. The film is narrated by actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

For more information about the series, see here. And, watch the blog later this month for information about other films in the Food For Thought Series.