Food on Screen: All in This Tea

Les Blank is known for making lighthearted films about food, such as Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers and Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. This film, All In This Tea, simply follows an American tea importer as he criss-crosses China in search of the best tea to buy and sell to his clients. He runs into some trouble for wanting to deal directly with the farmers (rather than going through a syndicate) but still comes home with tons of tea, meanwhile trying to get the farmers to go organic.



The film is loosely structured around different kinds of tea (Oolong, Pu-ehr, etc.). It's interesting for someone who has any interest in tea, it's history, and the complex culture that developed around it in China. On Netflix instant!

Viennese Vegetable Orchestra

(I did not take this picture)

I heard about these folks a few weeks ago... Here's a video (after a commercial). I wonder, is a carrot-cucumber-pepper called a ca-cu-pe? Could be the long awaited vegetarian response to turducken!

Food on Screen: Food Beware

The food documentary is not an exclusively US phenomenon - Europe has ventured into the genre with films like Our Daily Bread and the recent French documentary Food Beware.



Despite the terrible English title, this film is worth watching. It's about a small town in the South of France where the mayor decided that all school children and invalids - who are fed through a central municipal kitchen - should eat organic food. This decision was spurred by increasing scientific evidence that pesticides used in the region (which is heavily agricultural and wine-producing) have been responsible for health problems in children and adults.

The cross-cultural difference is what I found particularly interesting about the film. It's really astounding to see French school children sitting at lunch tables, enthusiastically tasting and describing the new foods they are being offered. That, and the class picnic at the base of the Pont du Gard, were enough to bring a tear to my eye.

It's a nicely made film, and set in a beautiful region. Available on Netflix!

Food on Screen: Fresh

Thanks to my St. David's peeps for putting together a wonderful screening and potluck for the new food documentary Fresh. It was really inspiring to see such a big crowd gathered, and hear about the success that local farmers are having with CSAs. The two organizations who came to the screening were Johnson's Backyard Garden and Farmhouse Delivery, both of which have blogs and post recipes.

Check out clips from the movie here. (Embedding was doing funky things to my blog's formatting)

One thing I learned from the film is that produce sold in supermarkets today has 40% less nutrition than in the 1950s - due to agricultural practices. Yet another reason to buy organic and local if possible.

Food on Screen: Grown in Detroit

Leave it to the Dutch to fund a documentary that Americans across the country should watch. I don't know if or when this film will arrive stateside, but I was lucky to catch it at the Austin Film Festival, where it won the prize for best documentary.

In a nutshell, GROWN IN DETROIT is about urban farming in, well, Detroit, where there are a lot of unused and vacant lots, high unemployment and poverty. Specifically, the film is about a program for teenage moms that not only provides day care/education for their kids, but also teaches the girls agricultural skills - with the hope that they will both feed the city and their families, and make some money doing it.

The school, one of only two in the US that has a similar program, is called Catherine Ferguson Academy. It's pretty amazing stuff (though might fall under the category of common sense...). The directors, a young Dutch couple, were at the screening I attended, and unfortunately it seems that the school has lost funding and had to fire half their staff last year. This will obviously affect the quality of the program. But on the bright side, the number of gardens in Detroit is mushrooming - from 300 to 800 in a little over a year.

Catch this documentary if you have the chance. The sight of an urban environment, usually so far from nature, being transformed not only into a green place, but one that can sustain food (and bees! the bees love it in Detroit!) makes you feel hope where it might seem none is possible.

Cooking in hotels (and schools)

The excellent public radio cooking show, The Splendid Table, featured this guy a couple of weeks ago. Being hungry in a hotel room - and not wanting to pay for room service - is something I can definitely relate to. Though I'd be wary of using the kettle for tea water after making tortellini!

The same show featured an excellent interview with the head of lunch programs in St. Paul, MN, about getting healthy food in public schools. (Scroll down about half the page.)

Favorite Food Movies

In anticipation of Julie & Julia, I've been remembering some of my favorite "food movies." Funny thing is, most movies that feature food prominently use it symbolically rather than being actually about food. Examples that come to mind are La Grande Bouffe (1973), The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover (1989), and Spirited Away (2001).

These next films, however, show a real enjoyment of food as food. I hope J & J does the same...

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) - In this opening scene, I don't even know what half the things he's preparing are, but it still makes me drool! Directed by Ang Lee, two thumbs up.

Big Night (1996) - This is the final scene from the film, the "morning after" a big cooking blowout (featuring a timpano, among others). I've always loved the simplicity of this ending scene; sometimes all you need is scrambled eggs.

Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980) - One of Les Blank's famed food movies, this one features Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, as well as other restaurants, home cooks, and even musicians, all extolling the virtues of garlic.

What are your favorite food movies?

Food, Inc.

Made the trek to see FOOD, INC. this past weekend, and was pleasantly surprised to find the theater about half full on a Sunday afternoon. Granted, it was 105 outside, making the cool of the theater even that much more appealing. But given the comments, boos, and applause over the course of the film, it's safe to say the audience was an enthusiastic one.

Having been an early and avid reader of both Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, I wasn't too surprised at a lot of the information in the film. And despite what reviewers have been saying, the graphic footage from the CAFOs and kill floors isn't nearly as bad is it could have been. Overall the tone was only gently alarmist; everyone who spoke onscreen seemed credible, and even the mother of the 2 year old who died from E-coli poisoning managed to seem like she had a sense of humor. Stylistically, it was reminiscent of Super Size Me, with very slick graphics (the opening title sequence is especially nice).

Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser are onscreen a lot, but they share time with the farmer Pollan profiles in TOD, Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Virginia. It's Salatin who provides the most philosophical contributions to the conversation, pointing out that a culture that treats its animals so inhumanely most likely has the same approach to its own citizens, and peoples from other countries.

At the end of the film, there is a text-only sequence listing actions that we as consumers can take to make change to the system, and overall the message seems to be one of power to the consumer. Since it's a Participant Productions film, the website is full of info as well and activism is fully integrated into the release strategy. I sat through the credit sequence and as the lights came on, the group of four young women (about my age) were still sitting in my row, debating whether or not it's really possible to eat healthily on a minimum wage. I hope the film sparks many such debates. Who knows what can come of it?

Julie & Julia trailer

OMG Meryl Streep as Julia Child! I am very excited.

Edward Weston: Food Photographer

My mind has been on things academic of late, so here is a series of photos of vegetables done by Edward Weston. Most of these can be seen on Edward-Weston.com.

Cabbage Leaf

Chard

Eggplant

Artichoke Halved

Toadstool

Toadstools

Pepper

The most famous Pepper

Weston is more known as a great photographer than a food photographer, but these studies show a love for the inherent beauty of natural food.

Food on Screen: The Gold Rush

Back to school for me, this week. Less time to cook (less time to eat!), but all of that will sort itself out eventually. 

So, this week's entry is from the 1925 Charlie Chaplin film, The Gold Rush, which I saw on the big screen for one of my classes this week. I believe this is called the "Oceana Roll" sequence. Totally charming.