Pilot for PBS-Bound Food Forward to Air at the Sonoma Film Fest

Robert Lemon's ¿Tacos or Tacos? isn't the only food-filled short slated to debut at this week's Sonoma International Film Festival. Also premiering this Thursday: The 32-minute pilot for Food Forward, which emphasizes positive changes swirling around America's soul-sucking food system.

Last July, Greg Roden ― Food Forward's co-creator, producer, and director ― was in mid-scrabble, trying to raise enough cash to finish the pilot. He and his partners did, and in January they showed it to KQED's 10-person new-programming committee. They loved it. Now, Roden tells SFoodie, KQED wants a dozen episodes to air and distribute nationally. All Roden and his partners need to do: Raise even more cash, which, thanks to a growing list of corporate sponsors that includes Annie's Homegrown, Lagunitas Brewing Co., and Purity Organic, is looking more and more likely.

To drive awareness about the series, Food Forward co-creator Stett Holbrook (food editor of Silicon Valley's alt-weekly Metro) and his family are hooking up a 1965 Airstream Overlander to the car and driving cross-country, talking up the series and meeting with people they call "food rebels" like school-lunch reformers in Wisconsin who source from local farmers.

"There are all these great people you've never even heard of who are really making a difference," Roden says.

Want to attend the free screening of the Food Forward pilot in Sonoma? It's 7 p.m. at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 551 Broadway (at E. Napa), Sonoma, 707-939-1080.