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Films on Food
September celebrates a number of food related occasions - it's National Honey Month, National Rice Month, National Potato Month, National Organic Harvest Month and Hug A Texas Chef Month. Toast the occasion with your favorite dish and a film.
Feature Films
This crazy-quilt story takes place in a rickety apartment building. There, a sweet-natured clown takes a room and becomes a catalyst in the lives of a cleaver-wielding butcher, his myopic daughter, a woman with a flair for suicide, toymakers who create little boxes that go "moo", and other unusual tenants.
A retired master chef and widower is worried about the future of his three unmarried daughters who are skeptical about marriage. Yet he himself surprises them with his secret love affair with a young woman many years his junior.
A heartwarming comedy that's all about food, family and a certain kind of magic that only happens at the dinner table. Martin is the culinary genius behind a sucessful restaurant and the widowed father of three daughters whom he has a compulsion to try and steer in the right direction. Hungry for their independence, the girls find themselves at odds with their traditionalist father.
A musical-comedy-horror show which parodies horror films made by Alfred Hitchcock and others.
With the mysterious arrival of Babette, a refugee from France's civil war, life for two pious sisters and their tiny hamlet begins to change. Before long, Babette has convinced them to try something other than boiled codfish and ale bread-- a gourmet French meal! Her feast scandalizes the elders, except for the visiting General. Just who is this strangely talented Babette, who has terrified this pious town with the prospect of losing their souls for enjoying too much earthly pleasure?
The story of two brothers whose Italian restaurant is on the brink of bankruptcy. Their only chance for success is to risk everything they own on an extravagant feast for bandleader Louis Prima. But their big night is complicated by a lovers' triangle, a sneaky restaurant rival, and the hilarious perfection of chef Primo.
Sunday dinner at Mother Joe's is a mouth-watering, 40-year tradition. As seen through the eyes of her grandson Ahmad, love and laughs are always on the menu, despite the usual rivalries simmering between his mom Maxine and her sisters Teri and Bird. But when serious bickering starts to tear the family apart, the good times suddenly stop. Now it's up to Ahmad to get everyone back together and teach them the true meaning of soul food.
In the heartland of Iowa, five grad school liberals share a house, a left-wing outlook, and Sunday suppers filled with conversation and social criticism. But when a redneck trucker threatens one of their own, he inadvertently puts them on the radical road to serial murder.
Tampopo follows the life of a young widow who runs a small noodle restaurant in Tokyo and her quest for the perfect bowl of ramen. Helping her to attain top ramen status is Goro, the truck driver who at first criticizes Tampopo's cooking ability and then helps her to master it.
Candy
manufacturer Willy Wonka has a contest and hides five golden tickets in five of his scrumptious candy bars. All five ticket winners get a free tour of the mysterious Wonka factory, as well as a lifetime supply of Wonka candy. Four of the children are nasty brats who are punished by Willie Wonka with various diabolical, but funny, methods. Only Charlie, a likable child, wins the heart of the manufacturer.
When a marketing executive for a huge burger chain finds a nasty secret ingredient in their burger recipe, he goes to the ranches and slaughterhouses of Colorado to investigate and finds that the truth is sometimes difficult to swallow.
Documentaries
Celebrates the virtues of garlic, from a Chinese restaurant's sizzling wok to the stuffed piglet specialty of Berkeley's Chez Panisse and the garlic festival at Gilroy, Calif. Garlic enthusiasts describe the bulb's role in history, its medicinal qualities, and their own favorite garlic concoctions.
Documents the trend of unlabeled genetically-modified foods which have become increasingly prevalent in grocery stores. Unravels the complex web of market and political forces that are changing the nature of what we eat. Explores organic and sustainable agriculture as alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture.
For decades, Northwest agriculture was focused on a few big crops for export. But climate change and the end of cheap energy mean that each region needs to produce more of its own food and to grow it more sustainably. Good Food visits farmers, farmers' markets, distributors, stores, restaurants and public officials who are developing a more sustainable food system for all.
Recounts the life of Ruth Stout, who describes her own gardening methods and her experiences of subjects ranging from growing vegetables to growing old.
A collection of short films on food and sustainability.
Could the prairie, which runs on sunlight and rain, be the model for the perfect farm? This program explores natural systems agriculture, or perennial polyculture, an alternative to industrial agriculture and agroforestry that combines cutting-edge science with nature itself. Dr. Wes Jackson, a MacArthur Fellow and founder of the Land Institute, illustrates these concepts in action, discussing the environmental and economic advantages of perennials--rather than annuals--grown in a mixture that mimics the prairie ecosystem. John Todd, a designer of ecological technologies, leads a tour of one of his "living machines" used to clean sewage water.
Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming. Produced between October 2003 and October 2005 the film looks into the places where food is produced in European farms, greenhouses, processing plants and other places where crops and animals are cultivated and processed to become food for people. The images of food and animals treated as an industrial products are presented without comment.
Varda's most recent effort-- the first filmed with a digital videocamera-- focuses on gleaners, those who gather the spoils left after a harvest, as well as those who mine the trash. Some completely exist on the leavings; others turn them into art, exercise their ethics, or simply have fun. The director likens gleaning to her own profession-that of collecting images, stories, fragments of sound, light, and color.
Multicultural look at how we eat. Illustrates that how we view food is learned. Explains that there are no universal food customs nor dietary restrictions. What one refuses to eat is a symbol of social identity.
It introduces an international eco-gastronomic movement known as "slow food champions". The champions aim at protecting traditional culture and environment while encouraging regional production, food education and pleasure. The program visits Italy, Mexico, Australia and see the development of the food revolution.
Hungry consumers in America and abroad are losing their appetite for the world's largest fast food company. Is McDonald's a brand on the verge of collapse, or can it be revitalized?
Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock embarks on a journey to find out if fast food is making Americans fat. For 30 days he can't eat or drink anything that isn't on McDonald's menu; he must eat three square meals a day, he must eat everything on the menu at least once and supersize his meal if asked. He treks across the country interviewing a host of experts on fast food and a number of regular folk while downing McDonald's to try and find out why 37% of American are now overweight. Spurlock's grueling diet spirals him into a metamorphosis that will make you think twice about picking up another Big Mac.
Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat, and how we farm.
The ancient Buddhist meditation of mindfulness has become a popular tool in psychotherapy over the last decade. After introducing the audience to the history of mindfulness, Dr. Gehart creates experiences through breathing and eating meditations. The viewer is peacefully inducted into the mindfulness meditation.
Profiles four American women farmers who raise cattle, sell goat cheese and harvest organic vegetables. With commentary by Caroline Sachs, an expert on women in agriculture and Amy Trauger, founder of the Pennsylvania Women's Agricultural Network.
Milk in the land examines the relationship between the popular drink and culture, revealing how milk became America's staple beverage as well as a powerful symbol of American patriotism and progress. The documentary features interviews with historians, physicians, farmers, philosophers, activists, ethicists, and authors.
Exposes the conditions and factory farming methods that animals are raised under by the animal industries, and examines the social forces in society that conceal and legitimize the abuses that animals suffer.
