Chhath is an ancient Hindu festival from East India and southern Nepal, celebrated mainly in Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of Nepal. It honours Surya, the sun god, for the gift of life on Earth and for the fulfilment of wishes, and also worships Chhathi Maiya, a goddess linked to Surya. The festival runs for six days after Diwali, and its rituals span three nights and four days, including holy bathing, fasting, standing in water and offering food to the rising and setting sun. Many devotees walk to riverbanks to make these offerings, and diaspora communities celebrate it in cities around the world.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.