The Beanfield is getting ready to grow again in its sheltered corner outside the Wexner Center along College Road. We're now into the second season of this public art project conceived by artist Michael Mercil.

To help launch this year's growth cycle and raise awareness of hunger in our community, we're hosting a bean soup celebration with dinner by Cam's on Campus 6:00 p.m., followed by an 8:00 p.m. screening of Our Daily Bread, an outstanding documentary film selected by our media arts department. Proceeds benefit Operation Feed, a project of the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. Check back for additional details and keep reading to find out more about the film.

Please note: film-only admission is available with a food donation to Operation Feed.

Our Daily Bread vividly reminds us of where our food comes from by examining the depersonalized, mechanized, and often barbarous world of industrialized agriculture and food production. Director Nikolaus Geyrhalter creates a film Premiere magazine calls "eccentrically lovely and frequently horrifying" without utlizing voiceover narration, interviews, or a overtly partisan point of view. Instead, his beautiful cinematography provides stark contrasts to the environments he depicts--a sterile abattoir, pesticide-doused field of sunflowers, or assembly line covered with baby chicks. As Variety noted, many shots possess a "painterly quality, particularly the portrait shots of workers at rest, their off-center composition and use of light sometimes recalling Vermeer paintings." Audiences found the film terrifically moving when it was shown at the Wexner Center in January, and it seems a most appropriate choice for this occasion. (2005, 92 mins., 35mm).