Curt Ellis is a creator of the hit documentaries King Corn, The Greening of Southie, Big River and Truck Farm, co-founder of the national service organization FoodCorps, and a passionate campaigner for building a world in which service, sustainability and health are celebrated.
Ellis and his longtime collaborator Ian Cheney discovered their unique mix of humor and advocacy in college. They released sheep on the Yale quad, brought farmers and chefs into the classroom, and organized freshman orientation trips to local farms. By graduation, they had found their passion: reconnecting their generation to food.
After college, Ellis and Cheney teamed up with Ellis’ cousin Aaron Woolf to create King Corn, which follows the two friends on a journey to understand where their food comes from… by growing it. In what The Washington Post calls “Required viewing for anyone planning to visit a supermarket, fast-food joint, or their own refrigerator,” the city-slickers learn to drive a combine, cash in on government subsidies, and homebrew high-fructose corn syrup. Their Peabody-winning findings, shared with theatergoers in 60 cities and in a PBS national broadcast, change the way audiences eat.
Filmmaker Curtis Ellis discusses “King Corn,” his film that shows how ingrained corn products are in our diet.
King Corn -- that corn!