Film Screening: The Peasant and the Priest

The Peasant and the Priest:
A documentary by Esther Podemski

Film screening followed by Q&A with the director and discussants.

The Peasant and the Priest examines two aspects of globalization in Italy: the dissolution of traditional farming under the tide of corporatized agriculture; and the increase in human trafficking and enforced prostitution. Variations of these circumstances are developing in the United States and many countries worldwide. This film recounts the stories of two Italian men in their eighties whose ways of life have survived from medieval Italy to the present. Sergio, a sharecropper, uses ancient farming methods that have become overshadowed by corporate agriculture. Father Oreste fights the tide of sexual slavery as more and more women from Africa and Europe are forced into prostitution. Woven through the film’s narrative is a metaphor from a medieval fresco in Siena, “The Allegory of Good and Bad Government,” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti.