Documentary 'Food Evolution' turns to reason to discuss GMO controversy

Calm, careful, potentially revolutionary, "Food Evolution" is an iconoclastic documentary on a hot-button topic. Persuasive rather than polemical, it's the unusual issue film that deals in counterintuitive reason rather than barely controlled hysteria. As directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, "Food Evolution" wades into the controversy that makes the term GMO (genetically modified organisms) what Jon Stewart once called "the three most terrifying letters in the English language."or what right-thinking citizen hasn't quailed at the thought of armies of artificially conceived zombie fruits and vegetables marching in lockstep under the command of monster corporation Monsanto until they take over the world.As environmental activist Mark Lynas says, "it’s difficult to pay Monsanto a compliment. It's like praising witchcraft."But taking as his theme a quote attributed to Mark Twain that posits, "It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled," filmmaker Kennedy wants us to consider the notion that much of what we feel about GMOs may be wrong.Previously responsible for the splendid "OT: Our Town" and the Oscar-nominated "The Garden," about the plight of a 14-acre community garden in South Los Angeles, Kennedy is a veteran documentarian.Here he's engaged the mellifluous voice of science celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson as narrator and made sure to talk to people on both sides of the issue, partisans who, ironically, all have the same goal: safe, abundant food for everyone without the use of excessive toxic chemicals.It is in fact the question of how to feed the staggering amount of people in the world — more than 7 billion now, 9 billion by 2050 — that was one of the stimuli that started Kennedy on this project. And he wants you to remember that trying to modify plants to emphasize desirable aspects is something farmers have been doing for a long time.