Where Yokels Meet Orgo

This traveling collection of shorts and two documentaries can be understood in light of Barack Obama’s fusion candidacy. That is: one America, from states both red and blue, where those who read Michael Pollan’s food books can find common ground with Toby Keith fans. Through Sunday, a package of shorts celebrating organic farming precedes the documentary Ruby’s Town, about rival turkey-racing enthusiasts in Texas and Minnesota. If nothing else, Ruby’s Town teaches us the origin of the term “turkey trot,” wherein great hordes of the birds—then free-range and not factory-farmed—were once paraded through small towns before the floats bearing beauty queens in the regalia of Istanbul, sultans, and, yes, Turkey. (It’s all very Christopher Guest.) Monday through Thursday, more shorts on rural life accompany a documentary on the folkloric culture of Iceland (land of Björk!). See Web site for full schedule and details. (NR) 7 p.m. (organic shorts program) and 9 p.m. (turkey doc).
Fri., Feb. 22, 7 & 9 p.m., 2008