Matter of Taste publication

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this project is an exploration of European food culture through cinema organised by NISI MASA main event at the Lago Film Fest, Italy 24. - 30. july 2009 www.matteroftaste.eu

selected short films For all the Tea in England - Kerry Mcleod, UK Semolina Halva (Irmik Helvasi) – Ezgi Kaplan, Turkey Devouring Reality (Devorar la Realidad) – Melissa Suárez del Real, Spain The Market – Ana Husman, Croatia Cravings – Andreas Lindergard, Sweden Cooking (up) Dinner (Ma Petite Cuisine) – Maryline Poux, France The Cake (La Torta) – Stefan Archetti, Italy Cum Pane - the one you share your bread with – Anna Linder, Sweden Silent Consent (Silenzio Assenso) - Alessandro Bianco, Italy Tripe and Onions - Márton Szirmai, Hungary Mash Go Splash (Brei Brumm Bumm) – Elisa Klement, Germany Pasta Day – Elizabeth Rocha Salgado & Aurélien Manya, The Netherlands Fish Eye – Margot Buff, Czech Republic Tropezones – David Macián & Eduardo Molinari, Spain Sa Cage – Luz Diaz, Belguim Apple & Ei – Ahmet Tas, Germany Stort - Joris Hoebe, The Netherlands Pogacha - Bálint Márk Túri, Hungary Mc Russia – Andrei Tanase, Romania A Film From my Parish – Tony Donoghue, Ireland

matter of taste Food and Film in Europe A project organised by NISI MASA

Introduction to the project - 8

a matter of taste

- 10

SHORTS COMPETITION

For all the Tea in England / Semolina Halva - 12 Devouring Reality / The Market - 13 Cravings / Cooking (up) Dinner - 14 The Cake / Cum Pane - the one you share your bread with - 15 OUT OF COMPETITION

Food Design - 16 Les Voix du Terroir -17 Interview with Juan Pittaluga (Miracolo del Gusto) - 18

and more...

Mondovino - 20 The Gleaners and I - 22

table manners - 25 SHORTS COMPETITION

Silent Consent / Tripe and Onions - 26 Mash Go Splash / Pasta Day - 27 Fish Eye / Tropezones - 28 Sa Cage / Apple &Ei - 29

photo by Lasse Lecklin

OUT OF COMPETITION

Homemade Smarties - 30 Milkbar - 31 Gelato: An Endless Passion - 32

and more...

La Grande Bouffe - 33 Super Size Me -34

lands of plenty - 37 SHORTS COMPETITION

Stort / Pogacha - 38 Mc Russia / A Film From my Parish - 39 OUT OF COMPETITION

Black Gold - 40 Sorriso Amaro - 42 Eternal Mash - 44 Terra Madre - 46 and more...

Interview with Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Our Daily Bread) - 48 Portrait of Marie Monique Robin (The World According to Monsanto) - 50 Biutiful Cauntri - 51 Darwin’s Nightmare - 52

ORGANISERS AND PARTNERS - 54 Credits - 58

content.

introduction In several ways, food and cinema are similar. Going to the movies, like sitting down to eat a meal with family or friends, is traditionally a shared experience which involves the elements of communication and consumption. Food and film are both pleasurable, but also deeply cultural products, which represent and influence the way we live, helping to define national and local identities. And in the European context, the plurality of these identities is of course considered to be something special.

However, many fear that both the cinematic and culinary domains are facing threats to their own diversity, as the multitude of different “tastes” are endangered by increasing standardisation in the modern world. Interestingly, in the past few years filmmakers (perhaps recognising this common fate) have started to investigate the different ways in which our food culture is being transformed.

It’s within the three interlinked themes of food, cinema and cultural diversity that the idea for the Matter of Taste project was born.

Earlier this year we made a call for European short films on the topic of “food and culture”, open to all genres and styles. The resulting selection presented here at the festival ranges from the dramatic to the comical, from reality to fantasy, and even the (unappetisingly) grotesque. What the works do share though is a keen critical eye towards the way we eat and how it reflects and affects our lives. We will be asking audiences to judge which film they think demonstrates the most interesting, creative and original perspective.

In our Out of Competition section you can also discover a series of mid and feature-length documentaries about food which are sure to stimulate debate, and some of them also the tastebuds, being accompanied by special culinary delights...

What you hold in your hands is no ordinary catalogue, but a collection of articles which attempt to dig a little deeper into the subjects raised by the films in our programme. We’ve divided it into 3 thematic sections: “A Matter of Taste” is rather philosophical, all about the values, attitudes we have towards our daily nourishment; “Table Manners” aims to lay bare the realities of our eating habits, for better or for worse; “Lands of Plenty” takes a look at food production and consumption in relation to trade, industry and the environment. As an added extra, in these sections you’ll also find commentaries on some other well-known titles not within our programme, and interviews with relevant filmmakers.

Matter of Taste screenings have already taken place across Europe (Amsterdam, Bucharest, Paris, Budapest), and more are scheduled for this autumn! We will also be releasing a DVD compilation of the selected short films – not forgetting that a range of the winners and other submissions are still available for viewing on our partner site Daazo.com.

NISI MASA would like to thank its host the Lago Film Fest for their enthusiasm and hard work in embarking on this new adventure with us. During these days we hope to share some unique and intimate experiences with audiences and guests alike; under the stars, within hidden courtyards and beside the water, with the sound of the local frogs - and most certainly the taste of good food - lingering in the air…

Buon appetito!

Jude Lister Artistic Coordinator

organising partners

collaborators

Servizi Sociali dei Comuni di Revine Lago e Follina Slow Food on Film festival

sponsors

“Matter of Taste” is supported by the “Europe for Citizens” programme of the European Union

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a matter of taste

– values, attitudes, tradition & diversity

Food is a more philosophical subject than one might first imagine. The way we eat reflects many ideas, attitudes and values that we hold about life, and forms an important part of our cultural heritage. This heritage has in the past been extremely diverse in Europe, reflecting a multitude of different traditions evolved over generations and generations.

However, even if traditional local recipes survive, influences from other countries are stronger than ever before. There is an increasing standardisation - you can now find sandwiches, hamburgers, pizza and noodles almost anywhere in the world. Conversely, the movement of peoples has actually also brought increased variety - a kind of culinary ‘cosmopolitanism’ - and we are more open now to new flavours. ‘Fusion food’ represents

an obvious manifestation of this phenomenon of cultural pluralism.

Overall we could say that our tastes are becoming globalised. This process is not however without certain resistance. One example of the safeguard of local cultural traditions via food policy can be found in the French “controlled term of origin” label, which indicates agricultural produce made according to certain traditions within a specific region.

There is one particularly interesting paradox in our modern attitudes to food. On the one hand, the art of cooking and gastronomy are more popular than ever before. We are bombarded with TV shows and recipe books encouraging us to spend hours cooking meals from scratch, using fresh, healthy ingredients. Top

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chefs are even becoming celebrity personalities. However the average individual has never been less knowledgeable about food produce, and certainly spends less time on cooking than his ancestors. ‘Slow Food’ is one organisation which is trying to turn this tide and incite people to recognise the central importance of food in their lives.

One thing is clear at least: food does not have the same meaning to our generation as for our parents and grandparents. It seems that we have retained certain ideals, but no longer have the inherited knowledge (or enough time) to put them into practise. Advertising of course exploits this – many branding campaigns for mass-produced generic ‘standardised’ products have used the imagery and language of the home-made and the traditional…

for all the tea in england Director: Kerry Mcleod Producer: Anton Califano (Mayfly Films) www.antoncalifano.com

SHORTS COMPETITION Kerry Mcleod was born and bred in East London, and although she has tried living in several other places, she has always returned. After working on several shorts and television projects, she completed an MA in Documentary Practice.

united kingdom / 13’27” / 2007 A tea break-sized glimpse into the many and varied ways that Britain’s favourite brew is enjoyed today – and it’s not always a simple case of tea bag and milk.

shorts competition

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semolina halva irmik helvasi Director/Producer,/Editor: Ezgi Kaplan ezgikaplan@gmail.com

Ezgi Kaplan was born in İstanbul in 1981. She is an MA student at İstanbul Bilgi University Film-Tv Department. She makes short experimental videos and produces her own documentary projects. She also works as a freelance video designer for Çıplak Ayaklar Dance company

turkey / 11’52” / 2008 Semolina halva, which has been seen in many different cultures is made especially for sharing the mourning after a funeral in Anatolian cultures.

The author of the book Cheer your table, Takuhi Tovmasyan tells the story of her Uncle Mardik whom she never saw, while cooking this well known dessert.

devouring reality devorar la realidad

Director: Melissa Suárez del Real Distributor: La Virgen Marea films ojosdepajaro@gmail.com

Melissa Suárez del Real was born in Mexico City in 1981. She has developed a series of comic radio plays called “Pocaju International Radio” and received a grant from the National Fund for Arts and Culture in Mexico to write her feature film “The Generation of ‘76”; a fake documentary about a group of artists.

Her script “Furniture” was one of the winners for the NISI MASA script contest in 2009.

spain / 12’ / 2009 We were always told not to play with food. But what about art with food? Because, since food is the most basic fact about human nature, it’s naturally represented in art. Here we will make a tour around this subject with a group of food artists.

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the market Director: Ana Husman Producer: Maja Juric (Studio Pangolin) Distributor: Vanja Andrijevic (Bonobo Studio) vanja@bonobostudio.hr

Ana Husman (Zagreb,1977) studied in multimedia and art education department graduating in 2002 from the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb. She now works at the Acadamy of Fine Arts, Department for animated film and new media in Zagreb.

Her films have been screened at many international film festivals and received a number of awards.

croatia / 9’ 04” / 2006 The Market is about buying groceries and preparing food for winter. It deals with the tendency of the buyers to buy domestic products, considering them thus better than those foreign and imported, no matter the method of their cultivation. The Market explores people’s behavior during ordinary, everyday shopping on market places.

cravings Director/Script: Andreas Lindergard Producer: Christian Hallman www.grindhousepictures.com

After film school in Los Angeles, Andreas Lindergard began working as an Art Director on various low budget features, as well as on several commercials and music videos. In 2006 he moved back to his native Sweden and decided to, once again, make the move back to directing. Cravings is Andreas´ third short movie, the first one in Swedish.

sweden / 11’/ 2008

shorts competition

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Cravings is a story about love and love for food. Papo’s dream has always been to be a top chef, but in order to pay his bills he is forced to take a job as a taxi driver. Malin is alonely woman who by chance find herself drawn to the strange taxi driver that drives her home one day. When she finally has the courage to invite him to her appartment, she is not sure if he accepts the invitation because he wants to be with her, or for the possibility to cook up a feast. Or maybe both...

cooking (up) dinner

ma petite cuisine Director/Co-Writer: Maryline Poux Co-writers: Delphine Pinatel-Ormsby, Charlotte Vaur pouxm@yahoo.fr

After cinema theory studies, Maryline Poux worked 3 years in production of documentaries. Wishing to get into directing, after a taste of writing scripts, she initiated this project in particular through a short training course last spring. She exercises various artistic practices and wishes to make movies ... now more often! In culinary terms, she would like to know cooking but already can eat!

france / 11’12” / 2009 A young woman has invited a man for dinner and is cooking in her little kitchen.

Cooking up her rendez-vous, she tries to master her cooking despite the head winds…

the cake la torta

Director/Producer: Stefan Archetti Distributor: Nine Lives Films MMIX stefanarchetti1@hotmail.com

Stefan Archetti graduated from the London Film School in 2002 with the short ‘Demoniac’ which was screened on the international film festival circuit. He has since produced, directed & edited various shorts, the documentary ‘A tale of two hippies’ and ‘Il fungo sirena’, his debut feature film. Currently he is developing two documentaries.

united kingdom / 3’43” / 2009 Auntie Domenica decides to make a cake with her nephews Saverio and Augusto but things do not go according to plan.

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cum pane - the one you share your bread with Director: Anna Linder Producer: Lisbet Gabrielsson www.lisbetgabrielssonfilm.se

Anna Linder was born 1967 in Storuman, Lapland.

She lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden and is active in the field of film, music and art. Since 1990 she has taken part in various cultural projects, working as a producer and manager for art shows, events and concerts. Her works have been selected for festivals and art exhibitions, in Sweden as well as abroad.

sweden / 7’48”/ 2002 Grandma’s hands are gnarled from years of pain and hard work. Hands knead the dough. She works with rolling-pins, brushes and older baking utensils. Grandpa takes care of the wood-burning , watches over it, blows life into it, again and again. He moves the bread around on the hot hearth. No clear narrative. The bread is baking. They are silent, no idle talk. They work. We observe.

directors: Martin Hablesreiter & Sonja Stummerer screenwriters: Michael Seeber, Martin Hablesreiter, Sonja Stummerer, Roland Hablesreiter camera: Ludwig Löckinger editors: Dieter Pichler, Peter Jaitz sound design: Andreas Hamza producers: Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Markus Glaser, Michael Kitzberger, Wolfgang Widerhofer production company: Geyrhalter Filmproduktion GmbH www.geyrhalterfilm.com The sound of sausage: When a bite produces a distinct crunch, they taste particularly good. Fish sticks, on the other hand, don’t make such great noises, but they can be arranged nicely in the pan. And why tea biscuits must have precisely 52 notches is still not clear. Food Design shows how form, colour, smell, consistency, the sounds made during eating, manufacturing technique, history and stories influence food design. Should foodstuffs be considered designer products in the same way as Armani suits, Alessi coffee cups and Ferraris? Of course!

out of competition

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Filmmakers Martin Hablesreiter and Sonja Stummerer interview a weird and wonderful assortment of boffins in white coats, molecular gastronomists and elusive “food designers”, (creators of new edible things that we don’t - yet - know we want or need) in order to discover the secrets of success in the food industry. Through their revelations, it soon becomes clear that the process of food conception involves a divine trinity of art, science and business.

Despite a slight sense of unease, you can’t help but be impressed by the sheer amount of research and experimentation which goes into persuading you, the consumer, to buy a certain product. In this universe, advertising is but a mere cherry on the cake (excuse the pun) compared to the engineering of these objects, designed to appeal to your senses in every way.

In the individualistic postmodern age, food products have endless possibilities. Having long been symbolic of various collective cultural, religious and sexual motifs (after watching this film, you’ll never look at a hotdog in the same way again), today they are items onto which we project even our personal desires and emotions.

We can manipulate what nature provides in such an advanced

opening film

food design austria / 52’ / 2008

way that we’ve gone beyond the realms of nutrition, pleasure, or community values. Eating is expressing oneself, just like choosing which clothes you wear or how you furnish your apartment. And thus food is - to go against everything your mother told you when you were growing up – definitely something to be played with.

So are we what we eat? As we transform food into our own image, you could be forgiven for thinking it was the other way around.

by Jude Lister Martin Hablesreiter was born in 1974 in Freistadt. A qualified architect, since 2003 he has been an independent scientist and artist in Vienna, and in 2004 he launched the studio Honey and Bunny with the short film Future Urban Organism.

Sonja Stummerer was born in 1973 in Vienna. Also with a background in architecture, she has worked as a set designer, project architect, and costume designer.

Since 2003 she has been working as an independent scientist and artist in Vienna.

screening accompanied by taste event directors: Florent Girou and Etienne Besancenot www.lesvoixduterroir.fr

OUT OF COMPETITION

les voix du terroir

The French wine site Terroirs France defines the term “terroir” as follows: “A “terroir” is a group of vineyards (or even vines) from the same region, belonging to a specific appellation, and sharing the same type of soil, weather conditions, grapes and winemaking savoir-faire, which contribute to give its specific personality to the wine.” By interviewing oenologists and wine specialists in Chile, France, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Brazil, the makers of Les Voix du Terroir present different viewpoints on terroir from all over the planet. Whereas the “old world” - notably France - tends to see terroir as a cultural identity expressing the age-long history of winegrowing and thus giving each wine region and vineyard its characteristic taste, countries without this long history of viniculture try to improve the quality, taste and character of their wine by using technical sophistication and thus adding features to their specific terroir.

Besides the discussion about how and how much man should intervene with the nature-given terrain to achieve a special characteristic wine, the film raises some interesting questions: How can one conserve distinctive uniqueness in a global and competitive market which tends to unify and simplify all kinds of consumable goods? Who is able to taste the slight differences of specific terroirs and, since wine is still a luxury product, who is willing and more importantly able to pay for this uniqueness? Is terroir nothing more than a marketing gimmick for wealthy people, a strategy to compete in a globalised market, or a cultural heritage?

Viniculture is an ancient tradition which probably dates back to the Neolithic revolution and had an enormous influence on the human race - and still does. In some regions of the world, wine, along with other nutritional products, defines the identity of the place itself, as for example Bordeaux in France or Tuscany in Italy.

In copying specific regional tastes (and therefore cultural goods), global wine companies around the world with more elaborated techniques and vaster vineyards could easily become a threat to

france / 60’ / 2007

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smaller, traditional winemakers, chasing them out of the market, destroying a piece of culture.

Is a more pleasant-tasting and cheaper wine better for the average consumer than the less-elaborated but therefore original characteristic terroir wine? One has to think about where unification and technical improvements make sense (for example in the automobile industry where higher safety standards and advanced techniques save lives) and where they pose a threat to ancient traditions and cultural achievements.

by Stefan Bössner Etienne Besancenot was born in the valley of Seine en Essonne, a large wine-producing region, Etienne was seduced very early on by wine and viticultural landscapes. After agronomy studies, he headed for Montpellier to refine his technical knowledge of oenology. Today he works in the Corbières as technical director of an organic winery. Florent Girou was born in Bergerac territory. After studies in Toulouse and working as head of cultivation of Bordeaux wines, he also went to Montpellier to learn more about oenology. Now a winemaker in Bergerac, he also works as director of a Tuscan domain.

preview screening & debate Interview with the director of Il Miracolo del Gusto

juan pittaluga

French-Uruguayan filmmaker Juan Pittaluga is well known in the world of food for his collaboration with Jonathan Nossiter on the Cannes-selected documentary Mondovino (2003).

He is now working on both a feature fiction film, Punta del Este, and Miracolo del Gusto, a border-crossing documentary about taste.

out of competition

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Since you have worked on Mondovino, is food and culture something very personal to you?

On Mondovino my obsession was about taste and I have always been fascinated by taste, that’s I why I am working on Miracolo del Gusto.

Does your fascination come from wine culture?

No, I am concerned about all tastes.

Even your political taste if you want me to be extreme. Maybe it’s because I grew up in different cultures, and different milieux, that made me much more aware about what taste could mean. In Miracolo del Gusto I am talking a lot about food. If you cannot make the difference between the Tarroco orange from a small farm in Sicily and the ready-made orange juice from the supermarket, then we lost something on the way. It’s easy for people to understand when you talk about fast food and traditional food made by your grandmother.

But that’s only one level of taste; the

other level would be e.g. books or films. I am astonished by how taste has put down the film industry. What happened to strong directors like David Cronenberg, Woody Allen or Scorsese making mainstream films? If these three directors have come down to such a popular level, taste has been endangered. And then there is the most complicated level which is politics. See how wide taste is: Oranges, books, films, politics! Miracolo del Gusto is going to be about the transmission of taste, what we lost in the last 10 to 15 years. It is going to be mainly about food and taste, something everybody can understand, unlike Mondovino that was just for a selected audience. There is nobody who does not understand what it means to eat. And that allows me to be a little more complex.

How can one define taste?

There is an expert in the film, the founder of the Institut du goût in Paris, Patrick Mac Leod. For him it’s impossible to make a definition of taste. He

compares it to the extremely complex vocabulary of the Chinese language.

They say that in order to read a newspaper in Mandarin you have to learn about 4000 characters, and all the possible combinations that they make.

And it takes a whole lifetime to learn all the 20.000 characters that compose Mandarin, and that’s the vocabulary of taste. It is something we are not used to talking about. When you eat something you say that it is “sweet”, “salty”, or “bittersweet”. The main structure is salt and sweet, and if I say “chili”, that will mean something for you.

But those are only four things and you are lost immediately if you have to explain it. That’s fascinating; there is

no way to have a transmission of taste in books or films. It has to be from human being to human being. Someone has to show you a piece of bread and tell you “this is good”. Then a different one “this is not good’. That’s enough for your education. There’s no need for words because words come from another level. Taste has its own vocabulary. I think we are losing that secret thing.

Another example is Chinese food and other culinary differences: I went to Taiwan and they have this thing called “stinky tofu”. For me that’s disgusting, but they love it! They even tell you “yeah it smells strong”, but that’s like the camembert. I mean all of these relations are fascinating, but we are losing all that. In the movie I will also criticise this criticism itself. Saying OK, we are losing all this taste, but isn’t that how life is? Maybe the future has the right answers. There is a restaurant called “el bulli” in Barcelona, with Ferran Adrià, who is considered the greatest chef in the world. He is one of the biggest representatives of deconstruction (molecular gastronomy), which I think is dangerous.

Deconstruction is a whole movement. In France there was Derrida the philosopher,

who launched the idea. Now they use it for the deconstruction of taste. I didn’t go but a friend has told me it is astonishing.

You are waking up to something you have never tasted before. They are working a lot with chemistry. Chemistry between you, and what you eat. Why not? Maybe they are right and we are wrong. It’s not just a film that accuses the industry. Of course there are bad guys, but there are bad guys everywhere. With Miracolo del Gusto I want to talk more about complexity.

Do you think that our eating habits are changing?

The way we eat is very important when talking about taste transmission. I spend a lot of time with my daughter and I remember how my family spent time with me. One day my father said to me, and this is going to be the heart of Miracolo del Gusto, a beautiful thing that took me years to put into a concrete thing. We were eating in an asado (special occasion barbecue in Uruguay), and he said “Do you know what time is?” He was just joking, being happy. I was 14, I didn’t understand, and of course I did not answer. So he answered it: “Time is love”. And this is one of the most beautiful things I ever heard.

The time you spend eating with people; the new generations do not spend that time, you don’t eat with your parents or grandparents, and thus you don’t have any transmission time. No time for your grandparents to tell you that the supermarket orange is not the same as the Sicilian orange.

There is a difference, “taste it!”. One day you will understand why it’s better. There is also a non-transmission of time, because we are going too fast, watching TV and eating alone, or in restaurants with friends, but not with your family. We are going so fast, that the transmission is about new to new.

It’s about fashion.

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This whole thing will affect the newest generation, and what they will be able to transmit. If you have eaten at McDonald’s for 20 years, what are you going to share and give to your son? “McDonald’s is better than Burger King”? Okay, maybe in time the food at McDonald’s will be OK, they are working hard on that. Nobody will criticize anymore the fact that it is bad for your health. But it’s bad for your culture.

Taste is the most complicated and fascinating thing we have.

by Maximilien van Aertryck

BESIDES, FROM OTHER HARVESTS....

Jonathan Nossiter (Argentina, France, Italy, USA 2004)

and more...

© Diaphana Films

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This documentary

by Jonathan Nossiter shows that globalisation doesn’t even stop for an ancient cultural product such as wine. By interviewing different winegrowers and – distributers as well as critics and other people related to the winemaking process - each of them with a different point of view, a different philosophy about how wine should taste be cultivated and distributed - the filmmaker draws a interesting picture of the modern wine business.

mondovino

At the beginning of the film the roles are well divided. In the right corner we have decent and humble winegrowers who have cultivated wine on their small terroirs for centuries, whereas in the other corner we have the huge global player - Mondavi, form the United States, the winemaking machinery with fancy laboratories and vast vinyards to cultivate elusive wines adjusted to the common taste.

But the film shows more than that.

Step by step it discovers the processes and the functioning of the market, sometimes revealing interesting details. Isn’t it strange that one of the most famous wine consultants (Michael Rolland) and perhaps the most influential wine critic (Robert Parker) are good friends, as they state?

And isn’t it even more striking that it is said that one devastating review from Mr. Parker can ruin an entire wine en-

terprise not to mention small vineyards in family businesses?

The process seems to be simple.

Michael Rolland consults and advises wineries knowing the tastes of Robert Parker, thus leading them to produce a special wine which will score high grades in Mr. Parkers critiques, thus become an expensive luxury wine. What seems to be unfair competition, or at least questionable methods, poses another problem: Smaller vineries state that this power executed by few men leads not only to a unification of taste but destroying the notion of terroir by pushing small vineries out of the market.

If we believe the winegrowers of Languedoc interviewed in the movie, the winemaking process was and still is something almost religious, a matter of poetry which shows ancient cultural traditions and the interaction between man and nature in each bottle of Bordeaux. They may exaggerate but

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While one could state that with more sophisticated techniques large companies could produce a greater variety of vines, the reality draws another picture and the aftertaste remains bitter.

Traditional winemakers complain that the use of high-tech machinery doesn’t lead to more diversified products but to wines adjusted to the common taste which try to bluff the consumer with the fruity bouquet while the character and the special goût are erased. In addition to that, special wines from special regions are not only a nutritional product but also a product of culture.

While exploring all these notions and processes in the wine business the film evokes another piquant question: Wine is nowadays considered a luxury product, at least in Europe and the US. So wouldn’t that mean that by chasing small family vineyards and growers whose incomes are just enough to survive out of the market, global players and wine enterprises got their share by making poor people poorer and rich people richer? Not accidentally the filmmaker interviews the incredible wealthy aristocratic Frescobaldi clan during the World Social Forum in Italy, thus revealing that the Frescobaldis collaborated with the fascist regime of Mussolini in order to remain in wine production during the war.

the globalisation of our world is an undeniable fact. Can we be sure that the Kebab on the Corner tastes the same as 20 years ago in Turkey?

Not to mention Sushi, which thanks to its increasing popularity can now be found all around Europe but has not much in common with the traditional Sushi served in Japan.

While watching Mondovino one can see that sociological, political and economical challenges are inseparable linked to each other and that the low costs for tasty Californian red wine for the consumer could be a high prize to pay for cultural diversity and small family wine yards.

by Stefan Bössner

Agnès Varda (France, 2000)

the gleaners and i

Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse

Provocative titles, though easy to apply on a worldwide scale to the so-called developed countries and probably even to our own kitchens. Mine, yours. What is there to say though, if even our fridges end up rotting on our barren sidewalks?

Although we are clearly affected by the recycling and ethical, even freeganism wave, the throwaway society and its Kleenex-products are still persistent. Meanwhile the starving stomachs are still filling the streets. Those on which we often prefer not to pay attention to. Yet it’s precisely on them, those “who have nothing, but hunger” that Agnès Varda has so often focused her lens on.

One of her first projects behind the camera, the Opéra-Mouffe, a “notebook filmed on the rue Mouffetard in Paris by a pregnant women” during winter of 57/58, is a kind of cinépoême with surrealistic accents on

love and maternity on one hand, and old age and poverty on the other.

Music by Georges Delerue, the film opens with those lyrics : “The OpéraMouffe / At the first chords / At first sight / It’s the grub”. And on screen:

© Ciné Tamaris

and more...

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World food crisis. New poor. Price augmentation. Food waste.

Whether they directly or indirectly affect us, these expressions have (sadly) become familiar to us. Lately, in the “Summer best-seller” column of a widely printed daily French newspaper, an article was talking about Jinnosuke Uotsuka, author of two successful books : Japanese who let their food rot in the fridge and Japanese who don’t let their food rot in the fridge.

leeks, pumpkins, calf heart, livers, brains, cabbages and flowers meet men and women’s faces, damaged by time and liquor.

43 years later, for the release of The

Gleaners and I , Agnès Vardas poetic and generous look has not lost any of its sharpness. Of course, just like good wine, it matured ; cinematography techniques have also changed. Food – especially wasted one, thrown away and recovered – is still one of its main topics.

And the interviewed characters, be they young or old, homeless or not, belong to the “dropout world” that did never stop to inspire Varda. Shot in digital, this documentary, as its name suggests it, decodes an ancestral “unchanged” gesture: to glean. Agricultural or urban, this practice – and above all, this right – has a different name depending on the region you are in, and concerns myriads of products. Natural ones are thrown or offered to the gleaners because they are unfit for human consumption : potatoes in Beauce, oysters in the Vendée, grapes in Burgundy… Urban ones are mostly fruits and vegetables (even cheese) strewed over closing markets or waste cluttering supermarket trash containers.

Being a real travel diary, a filmed tour de France, Varda’s movie is a soft col-

lection of portraits of men and women who keep the practice alive, needing it in order to stay a live but also for philosophical reasons. Born gleaners or out of necessity, they’re bums, gipsies, social-welfare receivers “youth without roofs nor laws”, but also restaurant owners, simple minded fathers and mothers, ex-biologists, artist… If their social and cultural profile varies, lots of them seem to have a wounded heart. So much for the gleaners.

And what about “I”(1)? Espigadora in Spanish… Literally, Varda is one. She never balks at bending over and nose about in order to pick conscript products and abandoned objects.

Her weakness? Heart-shaped potatoes.

When she sees them, her old hands pick and film them with such a devoutness. For her, this waste clearly is a treasure. Potato love. What she also likes : letting oil paintings come into the frame, such as Le Rappel des glaneuses by Jules Breton (1859) or the magnificent Les Glaneuses fuyant l’orage by Edmond Hedouin. Clearly, this type of gleaning

shows a quest for emotions. And by giving her movie self-portrait accents, Agnès Varda places herself in a more intimate than political register.

I am an animal that I don’t know she says, examinating and filming certain parts of her body, like a territory damaged by time. Beautiful and powerful to watch and hear. It’s as simple as that.

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Of course, the primary product our director harvests in her lens are the images. To glean is to film. To capture (something Varda illustrates with lots of humor, when she tries through different shots to catch trucks with her hand).

And if Varda is so fond of the “documentaire subjéctif” concept, she perfectly knows how to transmit with modesty and facetiousness the high pleasure she has to film the reality.

Not so much as a wake up call against food waste that our societies don’t know to hold back but to give us another lesson in humanity. Thank you Agnès.

by Emilie Padellec

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Table Manners of Bullie Introduction Lanners

sub theme table manners

table manners – eating habits

Each time we eat something, we make - consciously or subconsciously - a series of choices based on social factors.

We choose what food to buy, decide where we want to eat, with whom, and how much time we will spend for the meal. One can of course notice many changes occurring in Europe over the past few decades, not only in relation to our dining rituals themselves, but also to their effect on public health.

The first question for the consumer concerns the type of the meal. This is often dictated by the amount of time he has available: with the stress of modern life, more and more people are opting for a ready-made snack instead of cooking a “proper”, well-balanced meal. The consumer also has to make a choice about the origins and the prices of their food. Some prefer paying smaller prices, accepting mass production and imported goods; others are prepared to pay more to know that the product is coming from ethically and environmentally sound production – recently there has been a big success for organic supermarkets (the socalled “Bio-Boom”) and fair-trade products. There are even many who defy modern disposable society altogether and seek to minimise waste by eating the perfectly edible food that others reject.

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Then we come to the place and circumstances. At home or at work, alone or with colleagues, friends, family… One of the main questions is whether eating is seen as a social gathering or as a simple necessity. As well as the specific context, the answer often depends on the upbringing of the individual consumer: the family home is after all the place where dining and eating habits are transmitted.

Meals have to this day an important meaning for family life and cultural traditions (just think of Christmas, or the typical wedding reception in many different religions).

The way we eat reflects our backgrounds, lifestyles and social networks.

Lastly, there are the consequences of eating on our health.

In recent years we have seen the increase of nutrition related illnesses such as diabetes and obesity - the clear result of a society of overabundance. In contrast, there are the social pressures which dictate our relationship to food, mainly the cult of fitness and the obsession with body image. Young people are especially vulnerable to developing difficult relationships towards their bodies and food. Unfortunately, often it is difficult to define at what point these unhealthy attitudes cross over into ‘eating disorders’.

silent consent silenzio assenso

Director: Alessandro Bianco Producer: Aria in Testa - Donatella Bianco alessandro.bianco@gmail.com

SHORTS COMPETITION Born in Pescara in 1981, Alessandro Bianco moved to Bologna in 1999 to study Communication Science. At the same time, he started working in cinema. In 2006 he realized ‘Silent Consent’, his first short film. In 2009 he realized a documentary about the life of three Palestinian athletes in Ramallah, West Bank, still unreleased.

italy / 11’/ 2006 A crowded pizzeria, a waiter and a large noisy table. He approaches the table to take the orders. Everyone is immersed in conversation and nobody is listening. He struggles to get their attention, but his patience is not unlimited.

shorts competition

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tripe and onions Director: Márton Szirmai Producers: György Pálos, Márton Szirmai zaprily@gmail.com

Márton Szirmai born in 1977 in Hungary, studied Economics in Wien and in Budapest. He works as editor and director for different independent productions, broadcasted on public televisions in Hungary (DUNA TV, M1, M2) from 2002.

hungary / 6’51” / 2009

A delicious recipe for a quick lunch, from a vanishing age, served fresh and hot at a roadside shack. Sharing a meal like this with anyone should be a pleasurable thing. Except when it has a suprising twist…

mash go splash brei brumm bumm Director: Elisa Klement elisa.klement@filmarche.de

Together with other young filmmakers, Elisa Klement organized the first generation of the self-organized film school „filmArche e.V.“ in Berlin, where she absolved as a director in 2008. Elisa is directing and producing her own film projects and is working in professional film productions.

germany / 8’30” / 2008 At least the peas Toni has to eat, says her mother. But Toni isn´t hungry at all! Maybe the fat mash can help her? But he´s very moody today. That´s gonna be dangerous, ´cause the mother is quite near...

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pasta day Directors: Elizabeth Rocha Salgado Aurélien Manya Producer: ERS Films bethsalgado88@gmail.com

Born in Brazil, Elizabeth Rocha Salgado studied communication at the University of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. In 2006, she graduated as a film director from the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam and now continues living and working in the Netherlands.

Aurélien Manya works as editor, director, actor and singer in Paris.

the netherlands / 10’38”/ 2009 Deep in the forest lives Gianni.

Every day he cooks pasta di Gragniano for his 30 dogs…

fish eye Director/Script: Margot Buff Producer: PCFE Film School Prague john@propellertv.co.uk

Margot Buff is a filmmaker and journalist based in the Czech Republic, where she works as a multimedia producer for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

She is currently working on a documentary about Czech tramps, dissident outdoorsmen who endured the hardships of the communist era by escaping to the woods. She has also worked as a freelance cameraperson, editor, and writer.

czech republic/ 4’37”/ 2005

shorts competition

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A dark, humorous semi-documentary about the loss of cultural heritage in the Czech Republic -- from the perspective of a character with everything to lose.

tropezones Directors: David Macián & Eduardo Molinari Production: Audrey Junior Producciones info@promofest.org

Born in Cartagena in 1980. David Macián studied Cinema in Madird. In 2007 he co-founded “Audrey Junior Producciones”, a production company.

Currently, he is preparing his first feature film: Recortes.

Born in Madrid in 1987, Eduardo Molinari studied Cinema at Metropolis C.E. and Septima Ars. He is one of the co-founders of “Audrey Junior Producciones” production company. At the moment he is writting an action comedy called Emilia.

spain / 6’ / 2009 He is crazy about food, she’ll do anything to please him. A perfect romance… as long as something is left in the fridge

sa cage Director/Script: Luz Diaz Production: INSAS marianne.binard@insas.be

Since early childhood, Luz Diaz has been fascinated by lightning, story telling, sounding, travels and emotions. She directed a few short films (documentary and fiction) during her film director studies at INSAS art school.She’s nowadays working on her degree thesis dealing with cinematographic time notion in the scenario writing.

belgium / 12’45’’ / 2006 A woman goes through her ritual. Settles down, isolates herself and looks at her body. She needs to talk, say nothing, let it all out…

Speak the shame, the fear, the isolation. Will she ever break the silence?

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apple & ei Director: Ahmet Tas Production: Exilfilm GbR - Ahmet Tas atasfilm@gmail.com

Ahmet Tas lives in Berlin, Germany. He is currently preparing his first feature film.

germany / 5’35”/ 2007 In Berlin, four times a week, eight hours a day, turkish emigrants sing for an apple & ei.

screening accompanied by taste event Director: Böller und Brot (Sigrun Köhler and Wiltrud Baier) Screenplay, cinematography and editing: Baier, Köhler Producer: Wiltrud Baier Production: Böller und Brot Contact: wiltrud@yahoo.com

homemade smarties

Sometimes it takes the perspective of a child, with its mix of naïve curiosity and blunt honesty, to make you realise just how absurd the world actually is. Homemade Smarties is one of a special series of 8 films undertaken by the Böller und Brot duo, involving local children of Gordon Primary School in Huntly, Scotland. The concept of the HomeMade project was simple. Each group of kids had an unusual culinary homework – to recreate a well-known brand of snack food from scratch. As well as Smarties, the list included processed delights such as Mars Bars, salt & vinegar crisps, and a marshmallow concoction called a “Flump”.

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OUT OF COMPETITION

The result is somewhere between cookery game-show challenge, pedagogical initiative and comic home video, as Jamie, Kirsty and Chelsea go about their mission with a surprising attention to detail, carefully noting every single ingredient from the tube (“Soya leech-ithin...? I think it’s foreign…”). The only adult advice comes from a bemused Nestlé customer careline assistant.

The film doesn’t uncover any big industry secrets or aim to put you off junk food – we live in cynical times, and even many children are already aware that Smarties contain artificial chemical substances – but then that’s not quite the point. In the most light-hearted way, these kids are simply reminding us of how far removed we’ve become from our food – and from the basic activities of gathering, preparing and cooking. The three are encouraged to use all of their senses, investigating something they would have otherwise not put much thought into.

If an alien landed on earth and switched on a TV, they’d be pretty confused about the human relationship with nourishment. Endless programmes showing how to cook elaborate dishes from scratch jostle with adverts for ready meals and instant snack foods.

united kingdom / 30’ / 2007

The location of the HomeMade shoot was no coincidence: Scotland has one of the highest rates of dietary related illnesses - such as heart disease and diabetes - in the developed world, and local authorities are understandably keen on ridding themselves of this label through public health awareness campaigns and education.

Rumours are though that the HomeMade project may soon go global… Whereas mass-manufactured snacks tend to have the same taste and ingredients everywhere, it’ll be interesting to see the different attitudes of the consumers of tomorrow.

by Jude Lister Since 2000 Sigrun Köhler and Wiltrud Baier have been working together as Böller und Brot. Their work focuses on artistic documentary filmmaking (writing, directing, camerawork, editing). Before studying film Sigrun Köhler trained to be a graphic designer and Wiltrud Baier to be a pastry chef. Both have studied film at the Filmakademie BadenWuerttemberg.

Directors: Terese Mörnvik & Ewa Einhorn Editor: Jesper Osmund Executive producer: Fredrik Gertten Cinematography: Terese Mörnvik Producers: Fredrik Gertten, Margarete Jangård Info: www.wgfilm.com In Milkbar, directors Terese Mörnvik & Ewa Einhorn tell the story of 2 stubborn old ladies who persist in running their Bar Bywalec, one of the “communist style” eating houses which is about to die. Milkbars used to be the restaurants that you could find in every corner in Poland, just like in other Eastern European countries during Soviet times.

Their mission is to serve fast and tasty food to people who cannot afford to eat in restaurants. They are extremely cheap (even cheaper than cooking in your own home) but still have food of good quality, tasty and healthy thanks to the government’s subsidies.

After the fall of USSR, the subsidies of the state have decreased to a large extent, so this has decreased the number of Milkbars all over the country. The film opens with a scene during dinner time on a cold evening in Wroclow, Poland. The men eat their warm dishes, sitting on different tables in their warm coats. One of the men is hanging around and, seeming to have cold, asks for his tea impatiently. Then a lady comes in with a big glass of hot tea from the kitchen and we see the ‘real’ happiness of the man which expands to his whole face, with a smile from heart while holding up his tea…

This scene demonstrates the main idea of running Milkbars, and struggling in the new ‘free market’ against the fashionable fast Terese Mörnvik was born in 1969 in Växjö, Sweden. She studied documentary directing at the Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm and graduated in 2001.

Ewa Einhorn was born in 1977 in Klodzko, Poland. She studied at Malmo Art Academy from 2000 to 2003 and at Akademie Der Bildende Kunste in Vienna from 1997 to 2000. Today Einhorn works as an animator and director.

milkbar

sweden / 50’ / 2007

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food chain restaurants. Every person should have the right to eat ‘good’ food with some coins in his pocket, on a cold evening. And that’s really enough to be happy, to have a cup of hot, home-made soup that you can drink inside to have a break, on the corner of a snowy street.

Danuta, the owner of the place, spends her time with her accountant Dzitka in her office smoking cigarettes and struggling with rising prices and the paper bureaucracy of the new regime…Sometimes they get out of the office and peel potatoes in the kitchen (since the peeling machine is broken), sometimes they go to the supermarket to buy some missing stuff.

It’s not difficult to see how much this job is worth; to serve wholesome and fresh food to ordinary people in a world where nowadays cheap dinners are usually unhealthy - and you have to eat outside or while standing inside, not to please yourself but just to have a full stomach.

Perhaps, as Danuta says, we should have milkbars all over the world…A tired smile and a cup of tea would surely make the day much better just before going back to work..

by Gülcin Șahin

Director: Susan Gray Production: STEFILM Coproduction: AVRO / NDR-ARTE / YLE Teema / MA.JA.DE Contact: elena@stefilm.it

gelato: an endless passion italy / 52’ / 2005

One thing everyone knows about ice cream is that, even more than pizza and pasta, it’s associated with Italy and the Italian people. This is taken as a given fact. Yet how this freezing delight was born and where it comes from is not so clear. Gelato hides a mysterious past.

This film reveals the origins and investigates the myth, retracing its evolution, from the royal courts to the later outing onto the streets.

A path which has led to its massive spread across the world and allowed various “interpretations” according to different cultures.

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During this journey across time, Gelato: an endless passion shows how gelato, its production and its distribution, are closely linked to social and economic transformations which have taken place in the last two centuries. Making gelato is part art part craft, but most definitely a lifestyle.

The approach of the film is of an investigation, a mystery, which brings to light myths and legends linked to the invention. A range of specialists reveal commercial, historic, social and nutritional secrets. To accompany us in this explorative mission is the biggest expert and collector of objects linked to gelato, Robin Weir, and expert in the making of gelato, Donato Panciera. We also find other protagonists: Corrado Brustolon, who works in the oldest gelateria in Italy; Silvana Vivoli, the daughter of the best known Florentine gelaterie families, the Berthillons of the namesake gelateria in Paris Born in Vermont, USA, 1959, Susan Gray is an award-winning producer/director/writer with extensive experience producing for public television and cable in the United States and abroad. Susan lived in Italy from 2000 - 2005, where she has also been teaching documentary writing for the Bologna Documentary Seminar and Zelig International Film School. She teaches at Boston University and Massachusetts college of Art and is the director of documentary department at Northern Light Productions in Boston.

and director Anthony Minghella, son of a family of Italian gelatomakers who emigrated to the Isle of Wight. Alongside them we discover today’s promotional techniques for gelato with the head of marketing of advertising agency Mc Cann Erickson, Dawn Coulter, and meet the protagonists of American gelato, Haagen Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s.

Images and places of particular beauty, paintings of the period, a 43 and 52 min. documentary STEFILM in coproduction with: MA.JA.DEas Film,well Pierrotas e la“historical” Rosa, AVRO, NDR, ARTE drawings and caricatures, and humorous aniin association with: Artline Films, CoBO - Fund, DR, FRANCE 5 , ORF, PLANETE, RTBF, RTV SLOVENIJA, SABC2, SBSexplain TV Australia, SVT, YLE Teema. mations, theTVONTARIO, seductive nature of gelato, the atmospheres Developed and distributed with the support of in which it originated and the ways in which it has been consumed over different eras.

Stefilm via berthollet 44 - 10125 torino (italy) tel +39 011 6680017 fax +39 011 6680003 www.stefilm.it info@stefilm.it

A depth and eclecticism brings together these archive images (newsreels and publicity material from Italy, Austria, Finland, England and America), which contribute to making the structure of this narrative dynamic, surprising and anything but taken for granted.

Abridged version of text from Stefilm website www.stefilm.it

SOME MORE CRUMBS ON THE TABLECLOTH...

la grande bouffe Marco Ferreri (Italy, 1973)

The main roles are played by Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret, and the characters of the movie have the same names as the actors. All coming from the higher spheres of society, they meet in a lordly villa with the aim of passing a gastronomic weekend together. The claustrophobic and desolate atmosphere of the mansion demonstrates to us from the very beginning that there is something not quite right in this meeting: these friends have met to commit suicide by eating. In addition, they contract a few prostitutes and a teacher to join them.

In the film, sex and food are instruments of death rather than ways of surviving. The fact that the main characters of the film belong to the upper classes justifies us in saying that there is a critique towards the morality of materialistic society. They want to know how far they can go. They are trying to fill in the constant dissatisfaction they feel, the intrinsic existential emptiness of the human being, by eating. They have money and can allow it, they can eat and fuck everything they want and do it until they die. Only the prostitutes who they invite to the “party” (and who they consider neither as women, nor as human beings)

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run away from this trip towards the most absolute decadence.

The teacher stays with them.

The claustrophobic atmosphere and imagery are as colourful and baroque as the dishes they eat. The good manners of those who were behaving themselves initially lead to scenes where the margins have disappeared; there is no intimacy and they end up sleeping all together in an enormous black bed. This accumulation does not seem to be accidental: the baroque is an artistic style usually associated with the final phase and decadence of a period - the same decadence that the main characters transmit with their state of euphoria, which is actually nothing other than desperation.

Marco Ferreri leads us on a trip towards the most primary feelings of the human being. The sense of humour is constant in the whole movie; the thinnest irony is mixed with the vulgarity of farts, belches and the sound of mouths chewing oily chicken. La Grande Bouffe manages to alter and disorder the spirits of the spectator. In the seventies it was considered as a grotesque, eschatological and inconvenient movie. Today it continues to be thought of as such.

by Julia Sabina Gutiérrez

and more....

La Grande Bouffe was directed by Marco Ferreri and written by himself and Rafael Azcona, the scriptwriter with whom he worked for 20 years. In 1965 they had already written L’uomo dei cinque palloni, the story of a man who wants to know how much air a globe can contain, becoming obsessed by this idea and ending up faking the suicide. This interest in knowing what the limit was, at which moment things exploded, is what they finally ended up developing again - and with more depth - in La Grande Bouffe.

© Connaissance du Cinema

In 1973, Cannes jury president Ingrid Bergman condemned La Grande Bouffe as the most sordid and vulgar movie she had ever seen.

Morgan Spurlock (USA, 2004)

Morgan Spurlock (2004)

This documentary was written, produced, directed and starred by the American Independent Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. For 30 days he took three meals a day at MacDonald’s, every item on the menu sampled at least once, meals “super sized” when the option was offered.

Those were some of the rules Spurlock wrote down when embarking on his documentary that records the affects of his diet and the fast food has on America itself. The film suggest that the increase of nutrition-related illnesses is linked to fast food-products. An evaluation by Atso Pärnänen:

and more....

“I do eat hamburgers.

There you have it.”

An article about fast food touching on Super Size Me should probably start with a proclamation like that. “Soft drinks from an ice cold glass bottle are nice too.” Care to read further or made up your mind, possibly condemned me already? In the age of extremes, whether sky jumping or food fanaticism the opinions can run as high as the boiling point of the fries. At the same time as fast food gets criticized, its sales continue to go up, new restaurants are opened and like after a presidential election no one seems

to admit of having been for the new incumbent, even if surely someone was casting the ballot too.

In any case just like it was in the past, it is the meals and the mobility that make the self-made man. Burdened by tight schedules or with other interests than cooking, John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich in 1762 placed dried meet on his bread to save some time. One can only suppose whether this act was considered revolutionary or just another whim by a member of the upper class. Nevertheless surely each country and culture has something that could be

© Diaphana Films

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super size me

considered as fast food, ready to go, whether it would be the Romans and their olive stands or the British with pastries and pies, panipuri in India, noodles in Asia...

But it is the burger that has the beef.

Just as Ford makes cars so MacDonald’s serves hamburgers. The triumph of the assembly line, the methods learned and fine-tuned in WWII were ready to be adapted to create the wealth and well-being of 50s America and onwards. Suburban areas were built for the thousands of returning G.I.s, for the new families, the children that would be born. In

1951 fast food was recognized by the Merriam Webster dictionary and Ronald McDonald’s predecessor was aptly called “Speedee”.

As Eisenhower’s interstate highway system allowed one to drive faster and small roads with motels started to whimper away, the speed of getting to places became ever important. We were living the atomic age, and if rockets could soon reach the moon and speed records kept being broken, surely what had been started by Western Electric, the Pony Express, Stagecoach, Union Pacific Railway and in due time airplanes shuttling people between metropolis’ would keep reaching new heights with faster cars, computers, workers (robots), relationships. Not just instant coffee but speed-dating with the occasional tree hugging to stay connected to nature, whether done in the real or virtual world, while food was being nuked in the microwave oven. For some even the national past time, baseball, was alarmingly becoming too slow, and many opted for the more fast-paced and aggressive football.

In the middle of all this the V8 guzzlers needed cheap oil and gas, but the stomachs of the drivers needed food.

The more cars, the more drive-ins, and soon the eating habits, times and places of lunch and supper were changing around the world. As Thomas L. Friedman pointed out “No two countries that both had a McDonald’s had fought a war against each other”. While this may have recently been put to question it does show the meaning of economic ties in the global world. When we travel to another city we can check the price rates with the Big Mac Index and when in 1989 McDonald’s opened a restaurant in Moscow, Soviet Union times were truly changing. While Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu may to some of us still sound like places out of the Bounty, today they too house a MacDonald’s, even if not perhaps as many as there are in Manhattan. The ones that Morgan Spurlock visits in his film.

Many words have already been written about Super Size Me and other documentaries and even academic tests set out to see what kind of results they

would get from a similar hamburger diet. In the film Spurlock is the Average Joe, the American Adam, a lone ranger who goes after a giant corporation (a franchise of small businesses) and like any good citizen wants to find out some answers. Whether Ronald MacDonald is more recognized than Jesus can be questioned but Spurlock drives his point across. MacDonald’s moments have become part of growing up and eating hamburgers for thirty days is not necessarily good for you.

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With the film Spurlock hit instant fame, got his own television series, is releasing a new film and now, as the old saying goes, what California does today the world will do tomorrow. Walt Disney Co. is promoting healthier eating habits among children and is licensing its characters to sell fruits and vegetables, reviewing which franchises to have in it amusement parks. Governor Schwarzenegger’s “soft drinks out of schools” and the bill 97 against trans fats will bring a new aspect to the fast food industry. No doubt it will adapt. Being healthy is a growing business.

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Lands of Plenty.

lands of plenty

– food, industry, globalisation & ecology Following the Second World War, food manufacture began a rapid transformation. Mechanisation, chemical fertiliser and pesticides, monocultures, and more recently genetic engineering - massive-scale industrialised agriculture and livestock rearing became the norm. Such mass production techniques, we were told, increase yields and improve efficiency. And our living standards in Europe have certainly improved. Add to this the effects of globalisation, and we have access to an enormous range of food produce exported from all over the world. Increasingly urbanised and detached from the sources of our daily nourishment, we have thus long trusted in modern technology and the free-market economy to provide for us.

Fast forward to contemporary times. Public health food scares have alerted us to the possible dangers of manipulating nature, and images of battery-farmed chickens are now ingrained in our collective moral conscience. Even worse, research is now suggesting that we are in process of waging biological warfare on our own lands, killing off diversity and disrupting fragile eco-systems. Meanwhile, campaigners are denouncing the human and social effect of a system which gives power over the world food supply over to multinational corporations, themselves in our

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minds fast becoming synonymous with merciless exploitation.

If we are to believe all of this information, we could be forgiven for thinking that we were already living in our very own dystopian horror film. It is of course hard to divide truth from fiction, and to know exactly how justified our various food-related fears are. In any case, consumer society is now rudely awakening to the fact that the innocuous neatly packaged goods that fill weekly shopping trolleys have real human and environmental consequences. The new food buzz words are thus of an ethical variety. In other words, how many air miles did your organic, cooperative fair-trade banana travel?

As we move towards an uncertain future, these issues will become more and more important. On the one hand we have the continuing worldwide industrialisation and the further distortion of nature by technology (genfood, for example), and on the other a return to traditional agricultural patterns. Could it be that we will be looking towards ‘less-developed’ societies in order to find the way forward?

SHORTS COMPETITION

stort Director: Joris Hoebe Producers: Karlijn Paardekooper Sander Verdonk, Joris Hoebe, Theun Mosk info@levpictures.com

Joris Hoebe (1979) works as a film director/producer en Visual artist. He graduated at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam where he still lives and works. He tries to work on a wide scale of filmprojects that range from advertisements to Visual art. Currently he’s working on his feature film debut ‘We Are Knights’ and a follow up to his slow-motion project FOOD/MOOD.

the netherlands / 3’05”/ 2008 A family is sitting at an empty dinner table.

They are waiting to be served.

shorts competition

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pogacha Director/Script: Bálint Márk Túri Distributor: Attila Pluhar - EICAR balint.mark.turi@gmail.com

Balint Mark Turi was born in Budapest in 1985. He grew up in Gödöllő, a suburban area of Budapest.

He got interested in photography when he was around 14. A few years later he made a short film with a friend with the camera of his parents, a Digital8 camera. He started to study psychology but than stopped to take filmmaking courses. Recently he moved to Paris to study in EICAR.

hungary / 8’30” / 2008 What if a box of pesticide gets into the appetizing cake by the mistake of the grandma? The whole family eats it with with pleasure and passes away. And the lethal cake holds on its course…

mcrussia Director: Andrei Tanase Production: NISI MASA, Moviement MiruMir Studios cinetrain@nisimasa.com

Andrei Tanase was born in Bucharest in 1982.

He went to the National University of Drama and Film (UNATC) “I.L. Caragiale”, Bucharest. During the four years of study, he completed several short film projects such as Myriapod and Love Forever.

Andrei was the Romanian finalist of the NISI MASA Script Contest 2007.

russia / 11’10” / 2008 A German student conducts research on the vogue of fast-food restaurants in Russia. Will the Western model impose itself all the way to the city of Ulan - Ude?

a film from my parish - 6 farms Director: Tony Donoghue Production: Janet Grainger (Mayfly Films) info@network-irl-tv.com

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Tony Donoghue moved into filmmaking after 7 years as a biologist at The Ecological Parks Trust and The Natural History Museum in London. He now uses film and animation to explore rural traditions and ritual.

ireland / 7’10”/ 2008

An animated-photographic study of one parish in Country Tipperary, Ireland.

screening accompanied by taste event Filmed, Directed & Produced: Marc Francis & Nick Francis Editor: Hugh Williams Musical score: Andreas Kapsalis Sound editor: Gerard Abeille Executive Producer: Christopher Hird Associate Producers: Oistein Thorsen & Claire Lewis www.blackgoldmovie.com

out of competition

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Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil. But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields. Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.Against the backdrop of Tadesse’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.

An interview with directors Marc and Nick Francis: Why Black Gold?

We wanted to urgently remind audiences that through just one cup of coffee, we are inextricably connected to the livelihoods of millions of people around the world who are struggling to survive.

Coffee is a universal experience enjoyed by billions of people on a daily basis and is part of an industry worth over $80 billion a year. But the people behind the product are in crisis with millions of growers fast becoming bankrupt.

OUT OF COMPETITION

black gold

united kingdom / 78’ / 2007

Nowhere more evident is this paradox than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Our hope was to make a film that forced us, as western consumers, to question some of our basic assumptions about our consumer lifestyle and its interaction with the rest of the world.

From the beginning we wanted to make a film which, while having a political purpose, was not overly polemic; a film which was observational - giving the viewer the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about what they are experiencing.In making the film we also wanted to challenge the portrayal of Africa often characterised in the Western media by an overload of de-contextualised images depicting poverty with no link to our own lives.

Were you both heavy coffee drinkers before Black Gold?

We’ve always enjoyed a good cup of coffee - especially in the morning! We still go to cafes a lot to meet up with

friends and colleagues but it wasn’t our love for coffee that inspired us to make this film.

We just felt that by telling the story through coffee we could show people how we are connected, through our everyday consumer lifestyles, to what is happening in Africa. It also serves as a great window into the complex world of international trade.

What did you want to achieve with this film?

We wanted Black Gold to motivate us, as Western consumers, to question some of our basic assumptions about our consumer lifestyles and its interaction with the rest of the world, and urgently remind audiences that through just one cup of coffee, we are inextricably connected to the livelihoods of millions of people around the world who are struggling to survive.

We also wanted to go beyond the simplistic messaging of; bad weather + starving people + give money = problem solved, and highlight the more positive stories - that the solutions for Africa are in Africa. And that’s why the film was centered around Tadesse Meskela, an example of someone who isn’t waiting for any outside support - he’s actually doing something to change the situation.

Marc and Nick Francis are independent documentary filmmakers based in the UK. Over the last five years, they have conceived, filmed, and directed a number of films dealing with timely international issues.

Their films have found an accessible way of telling stories about the globalised world. Black Gold was their first feature-length documentary. Other

Crucially, we wanted to show the audience that the current international trading system is enslaving millions of people and is urgently in need of radical reform - we wanted people to wake up and smell the coffee..

Why didn’t you interview any of the big coffee companies?

We wanted to include interviews with all the major coffee multinationals: Kraft, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble, Nestle and Starbucks. But they all declined our invitations, which you could say, speaks volumes about the transparency in the industry. In the case of Starbucks, we spent over six months trying to get an interview through their PR agencies and their HQ in Seattle. They declined all requests and went on to publicly discredit the film when it was released.

The film doesn’t offer any solutions.

Our main objective was to make an engaging and compelling film that could attract the widest audience possible.

Imposing solutions within the film itself would have impacted on the way we wanted to craft our story. Above all, we wanted Black Gold to provoke people into action and encourage them to find their own solutions...and that journey begins when they leave the cinema. projects have included Nuke UK (2002) -- an observational documentary which follows a group of anti-nuclear protestors in their quest to disarm Britain’s arsenal of nuclear weapons; St. Dunstans (2003) -- a series set in an institution that cares for blind people who have served in the UK armed forces; and Hyde Park (2003) -- set in a neglected inner-city area of Leeds.

How succesfull has Tadesse and his Union been since?

Tadesse Meskela’s coffee has increased in price from $1.45/lb to a minimum of $2.30/lb, and his Union has tripled the amount of money being paid back to 130,000 farmers.

Have the coffee farmers seen the film and what was their reaction?

Black Gold was screened in one of the coffee growing areas featured in the film.

It was the first opportunity the farmers saw their lives being played out in the context of the global coffee industry, and they were totally overwhelmed by it.

We want to keep showing the film in Africa and other coffee producing nations.

It’s not just about raising awareness here - if the 25 million coffee farmers around the world knew what was going on, they’d be outraged by the exploitation of the industry and they could begin to challenge the status-quo on local or national level, which has to be the ultimate link in the global campaign to make trade fair.

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Source – the Black Gold official website www.blackgoldmovie.com

director: Matteo Bellizzi script: Matteo Bellizzi, Alejandro De La Fuente (consultant), Susan Gray (consultant) music: Andrea Gattico, Roberto Bongianino editing: Silvia Dal Ferro photography: Franco Robust sound: Giorgio Pettigiani production: Elena Filippini, Stefano Tealdi Edoardo Fracchia, Leena Pasanen, Eila Werning contact: elena@stefilm.it

screening accompanied by taste event

sorriso amaro italy / 52’ / 2003

out of competition

42 In the post-war period, many young girls went to Piedmont to work in the rice fields every year. Riso Amaro was a neorealist film which brought their story, and the character of Silvana Mangano, to the world. Fifty years later a Matteo Bellizzi brought the “girls” from that time back to these places, in a long voyage through the pathways of their memories, and reconstructed a portrait of this period, confronting the cinematic representation with the real and enormous changes that concerned modern Italy.

At the end of John Huston’s Battle of San Pietro (1945) an ox ploughs the Italian soil.

“Living is resumed” Huston announces as the battle moves forward. New crops are planted and a good harvest is to be expected that year. A new landscape of a more peaceful time is coming to life.

If one would argue that landscapes affect people and how we see them, then approaching Italy should perhaps not be done through ruins and places that

have now become tourist attractions, but on the banks of the many rivers that run through the fields of the country. Whether it be the famous Po river and the mist, floods, and tales that it has given birth to, or the Sesia that runs through Vercelli, the rivers can tell us as much about the country as the pretty girls on television and the adventures of the Prime Minister.

It is the soil which gives the ingredients for one of the best cuisines in the world and it is the women of the country who have done so much for it.

Italy right after WWII was not the land of fashion and fast cars that we see today.

The decades after the war were hard and it took time to rebuild. Italy had been unified as a state fairly late in European history, and the North and South continued to have their differences. On top of all this there was the legacy of the fascists, partisans and the Nazis.

As so often when a nation is going through a tough period, this is reflected in the art that is produced. Riso Amaro Matteo Bellizzi is born in Vercelli (Italy) in 1976.

Graduated in modern literature and student in 1997 at the school for documentary film makers “I Cammelli” run by Daniele Segre, is an author of documentaries and short films.

He debuted as a director in 2000 with the short film FILARI DI VITE (Rows of vine) obtaining numerous prizes in festivals across Italy (Turin Film Festival, Independent Film Festival of Milan, Festival “sentiero Corto” di Domodossola). In 2002 he began his collaboration with the production house Stefilm through which, in 2003, he directed SORRISO AMARO (Bitter Smile), his first documentary film. Since 2004 he is actively working

(Bitter Rice, 1949), written and directed

by Giuseppe De Santis (and produced

by Dino De Laurentiis, who married the film’s star Silvana Mangano - Miss Rome of 1946), is one of the most famous films of that period. It became a success both in Europe and North America. Whilst done in the style and times of neorealism, it was Mangano and her presence, bending to plant the rice, dancing in front of the fire, fighting in the mud, that contributed to the film’s success. The poster of the film says it all.

But while the energy and sex appeal that resonate from Mangano steal the show, the setting is something that was a reality for many Italian women.

In Matteo Belllizzi’s Sorriso Amaro we get to meet the real life workers of the rice fields: the women who travelled from poorer parts of the country year after year. Today, still energetic and singing the songs of their youth, we are reminded of how the previous generations really worked to earn their living and how your food did not just arrive at the local Esselwith Stefilm and in 2005 he realized as director and supervisor of the project, 12 short documentaries titled PIEMONTE STORIES presented during the Winter Olympics in Turin 2006. Nowadays is working on a film inspired by the works of the famous italian writer Cesare Pavese.

Main Filmography: 2000 FIlari di vite (Rows of vine) 2003 Sorriso Amaro (Bitter smile) 2005 Piemonte Stories 2006 Mentre stai dormendo (While you are sleeping) 2009 Valledora - La terra del rifiuto (Waste land).

lunga (Italian supermarket). Perhaps it is because of this that the old age of these fine ladies does not seem to show so much. The summers spent in Vercelli as “mondine” (rice weeders), meant 40 days of gruelling 8- 10 hour shifts (try to see how long you can stay bent over to eliminate weed).

As much as the film remembers the work, it also brings us closer to their off-duty hours. The free time with dancing and songs, possibly boys as well. If the soil and the land help us to understand a country, then the songs from the rice fields bring us closer to this generation’s soul and the reality that was their daily life. Their homesickness, love, work and hardships are documented. The songs were a way to talk about things that otherwise were perhaps not mentioned in public.

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Over 50 years have passed, the long lines of women are not there any more and thus neither are the songs. But the soil, the land, stays.

by Atso Pärnänen

script & director: Catherine van Campen photography: Wiro Felix editing: Stefan Kamp music and sound editing: Jeroen Goeijers executive producer: Estelle Bovelander producer: Joost Seelen coproduction: NPS television International Sales Agent: 10francs 10francs@10francs.fr

eternal mash the netherlands/ 53’ / 2007

out of competition

44 Ruurd Walrecht’s interest in historical crops began when he was very young. He started a life-long crusade to protect, preserve and maintain them. This Dutch Don Quichote of rare vegetables built an incredible collection of hundreds of crops that were on the brink of extinction. A few years ago, Ruurd suddenly moved to Sweden leaving his colourful mix of helpers behind.

Eternal Mash tells the story of this master horticulturist and his Green Ark. Because his life’s work is very important to all of us…

Supermarkets are always lined with shelves upon shelves of products wrapped in colourful packaging and plastic foil. 50 types of butter stand in line, like girls in a beauty pageant, trying to lure eager shoppers to fall for their charms.

The vegetable department seems barren in comparison. You can almost imagine tumbleweeds rolling by as, amidst all the colour and splendour of the canned and packaged goods, you enter the deserted vegetable area.

Vegetables lie in puny piles in what is often the smallest section of the supermarket. Here you can’t find a vast array to choose from. No limitless rows of produce. No sexy allure. Only one type of broccoli, one type of cucumber and, if you’re lucky, three types of lettuce. (True; you can now decide whether you want to buy them sliced or whole, but that’s got less to do with choice and more with inner-city laziness.)

All this is due to international legislation which has permitted the influx of countless artificial and pre-packaged products, but has determined that only one species of cucumber is to be produced for consumption, ruling out all other variations of the vegetable. Consequently 75% of what used to be farming produce has irretrievably disappeared.

Instead we have chosen to create genetically manipulated vegetables and fruits, shaping and re-shaping them until they grow faster and look uniform and perfect in our eyes. No wonder lemons (normally yellow for only a few months a year) get a useless and slightly toxic coating of industrial wax to make them shine. Uniquely shaped fruits and vegetables are out of grace.

Produce is now grown under strict, sterile conditions in carefully monitored boxes, and this is visible in the food we eat. Tomatoes might look beautiful, but inside they are filled with water and lack the taste that drew us to them in the first place. Vegetables have turned into Mediterranean coastal towns; once visited by foreigners for their uniqueness, and now built to the rim with high-rise uniform ho-

tels, defacing and standardizing them.

Gone are strong flavours, unique shapes and size varieties.

In Eternal Mash filmmaker Catherine van Campen addresses this very problem. For years Ruurd Walrecht had seen how vegetables were changing and being formed into glorified Xerox copies of their original ancestors, or disappearing altogether. So he started a project of collecting as many variations of plants, in their original form, to preserve for posterity in a carefully kept field somewhere in the North of the Netherlands.

Unfortunately, his ideals seemed to fall on deaf ears. As he fought to make government organizations see the purpose of his project, he only received support from a few concerned fellow citizens. So great was the non-support for his project, that after fighting it for some years he couldn’t stand the pressure anymore and left. He left behind disconcerted helpers, whose life he touched, and an invaluable collection of seeds and beans.

As with every such project, its value was only seen once it ceased to exist.

His seeds have been stored in so-called “gene banks”, in order for the species to survive the rigorous regime of homogenisation. But this survival is as sterile as the conditions vegetables are grown in these days. Packaged in airtight sealed sachets and frozen in huge refrigeration chambers, the seeds now wait until one day somebody might remember them and make them grow again.

However, the gene bank employee tells us; “If there’s interest in using them for genet-

After studying history at the University of Amsterdam Catherine van Campen (1970) started working for the Dutch Public Networking Company as reporter and presenter. There her passion for fictional and journalistic radio broadcasts developed.

She made several different shows, worked for different broadcasting companies and is since 2003 affiliated with the Radiomakers Desmet Collective, which she co-founded.

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ic manipulation they will also be released.”

An action which would thus destroy the whole purpose they were collected for in the first place.

Is society so digitalized that we don’t care anymore about what we put into our mouths? That we content ourselves with having a quick, tasteless TV dinner, because that’s all we have time for? Will this, in time, merge into the nightmare scenario shown in Wall-E where humans drink all food from a cup? Is the lure of colourful cans and packaging so strong that fresh products can’t compete anymore?

I guess only time will tell...

by Itxaso Elosua Ramírez

Director: Ermanno Olmi Screenplay: Ermanno Olmi with the contribution of Franco Piavoli, Maurizio Zaccaro Editing: Paolo Cottignola Music: AA.VV. E “Un albero di trenta piani” with the permission of Adriano Celentano Sound: Fransesco Alafaci, Fransesco Liotard, Carlo Missidenti, Danilo Moroni Producers: Gian Luca Farinelli, Beppe Caschetto Production: ITC Movie, Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with RAI Cinema f.desanctis@bimfilm.com

out of competition

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terra madre italy / 78’ / 2009 In his new documentary Terra Madre, inspired by the Terra Madre network of food communities, internationally renowned Italian director Ermanno Olmi delivers a powerful message about the critical issue of food, and its economic, environmental and social implications.

Ermanno Olmi was born in the province of Bergamo in 1931 to a family of farmers. This profound man, an attentive observer of the world in which he lives, entered the world of cinema as a young man when, while working for Edisonvolta, only a little older than twenty, he produced the first of his numerous documentaries. Among his many films, The Tree of Wooden Clogs won him, along with the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978, fame as an unequalled narrator of farming society. He is also the author of a masterful documentary on the Po, Down the River, directed in 1992, in which he investigates, prompted by ecology, the complex relationship between man and nature.

Terra Madre was conceived in 2006 by Ermanno Olmi and Slow Food president Carlo Petrini, united by their passion for the work and values of the farmers and others gathered at the international Terra Madre gathering in Turin.

‘Only Ermanno Olmi’s sensitivity could express the ethical value of this extraordinary gathering, Terra Madre,’ said Carlo Petrini. ‘This is a global network made up of a rich diversity of people, professions, and cultures and beliefs, which stretches to 153 countries across the world. It sows and cultivates positive ideas for the protection of biodiversity, respect for the environ-

screening accompanied by taste event ment and the dignity of food, for a future of peace and harmony with nature’.

Shooting commenced at the meeting in 2006, following which Olmi embarked upon an in-depth exploration that culminated in Autumn 2008, prior to the following edition of Terra Madre. The documentary includes moments from the international gathering, and follows some of the participants on returning to their homelands, interweaving their stories with the director’s own vision and ideas, to create a foretelling, political piece.

Source – the Terra Madre official website terramadre.info

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‘At the Terra Madre meeting I recognized the peasants who used to live in my countryside, at the time of my childhood’, states Ermanno Olmi. ‘Their faces look alike, no matter which corner of the world they come from. On those faces I could see the same marks, those that remind you of the landscape of ploughed fields, the rows of trees, the pastures. Today that world is besieged by big business, which only aims at profits. The peasants also want to have a profit, but their attachment to the land is also an act of love: this feeling harbours the respect for nature.’

FURTHERMORE, FROM THE CUTTING TABLES...

Interview with the director of Our Daily Bread (2005)

nikolaus geyrhalter

and more...

Were you always interested in the subject food?

No, I wasn’t. In my opinion, this topic was neglected a long time. When I developed the project, I didn’t know that Erwin Wagenhofer had the same idea and made the documentary We feed the world. Both films were financed by the EU at the same time.

Even if your film Our Daily Bread was financed by the EU, you pointed out the European agricultural politic in a critical way…

For me, it’s a big illusion. The whole European agriculture wouldn’t run without the cheap workers who are

often illegals. For the film it wasn’t important where to shoot because all over Europe the process is the same. The film allowed us to look behind the scenes into a very closed zone: the foodstuff sector.

Do you think your film had an effect on the public?

The documentary was shown all over Europe in the cinemas and in the television. We received a lot of emails saying: “The film changed my mind. Now I pay more attention to my food and where it comes from.”

The film was even projected in the US and in Japan where it was a big success. It is absolutely impossible

© Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion GmbH

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Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, Our Daily Bread looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which provides our society’s standard of living. to film in Japanese slaughterhouses.

The Japanese’s were very enthusiastic about this and it was a real track record.

Why did you choose to do the film without voice over?

In the beginning, the scenario was based on interviews; approximately 60% of the shooting were interviews. Then we had rough cut problems, the material wasn’t so efficient. We had to visit the places again. While viewing the material, we became aware that the images were strong enough and that we don’t categorical need the interviews. All my other films are based

© Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion GmbH

Why are these images so shocking for us?

The work in the slaughterhouses changed a lot. Today, every worker is only working on one special part of the body, with always the same movement of the hand. There is no interference between the different sectors. For the workers it’s a normal work and most of them are happy to have a job.

Are you still interested in the subject?

Yes, the research for the film changed my perspective very much. I ate a lot of meat before and now I eat less and try to get organic meat. Of course, organic supermarkets are better but even organic farming is not 100% clear. And who can afford to buy only organic food? Even if you grow your own food in your garden, you have to kill potato bugs and other small insects. You have to resign yourself to this fact.

Are you planning other food related films?

First of all, the film is more about our society and about what we are eating than about food. For me the film is a statement but I don’t want to go on in this direction. I always focus on one topic, make a film about it and then continue in another direction. The films should speak for themselves.

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by Nina Henke

© Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion GmbH

on portraits but in this case it was the wrong direction. The film is more coherent like this. It was a long process to get there.

Portrait of the director of ‘The World According to Monsanto’

marie monique robin

A woman who moves heaven and earth.

50 and more...

Dynamic, enthusiastic, persevering, this journalist is invited everywhere to debate on her pet subject: the stakes of biodiversity.

She reaches her public with simple words, concrete and terrifying examples. This strength of conviction, this faith, animates a woman who is a role model for investigatory journalism. As a reporter she has travelled a lot, particularly in Latin America, and has always unearthed hot potatoes such as organ theft.

Marie-Monique Robin is the author of numerous documentary-reports, three of them dealing with the stakes of biodiversity (Argentine, le soja de la faim, Les Pirates du Vivant and Le blé: chronique d’une mort annoncée). Coming from an agricultural family, she knows the value of the land. Her book The World According to Monsanto is signed to her parents, “who gave [her] a taste for beautiful things of the earth and thus of life”.

As she was preparing a documentary on bread she became interested in wheat, in the diversity of seeds and the industrialisation of cultivations. Today, Marie-Monique Robin denounces the harmful tendencies of this system of agriculture: “the consequence of the disappearance of biodiversity is the reinforcement of food insecurity. The one who controls the seeds controls the world.”

That’s what Monsanto wants to achieve by getting full control of soya crops. With the help of numerous lawyers, the corpora-

© Vicotr - M.Amela

Marie-Monique Robin is one of those women who never stop… fighting. While she finished the shocking documentary The World According to Monsanto back in 2007, she continues to promote the movie as well as the eponymous book - an investigation into the disastrous results of pressure directed towards the growing of geneticallymodified wheat by the American corporation Monsanto.

tion combed through every single sentence of Marie-Monique Robin’s book. They did not find anything to bring before the courts, because of the great rigour with which she led her investigation. Her journalistic career leads her now to denunciate a true public health problem. Her next movie will deal with the dangers of industrialized food, said to be the origin of numerous cancers. “Stop poisoning us!” she says during a debate.

Cancer is in our plates is a title that speaks volumes. And she sure knows what she is talking about, since three of her uncles died of stomach cancers while they were cultivating apples.

The link? The apple is the fruit with the most pesticides. These products used to increase yields are said to be the cause of numerous deaths among farmers. That’s why Marie-Monique Robin obviously recommends her audiences to eat organic food. But she does not stop there: “I will keep on putting all my energy in my work so that journalism does not go astray and so that the press deserves its nickname of ‘the fourth power’ ”.

by Joanna Gallardo

Emeralda Calabria and Andrea D’Ambrosio (Italy, 2007)

biutiful cauntri

Story of a land massacre “There you go, we offend nature but we bring nature back to our homes with its scars, with its laments.”

We often (perhaps almost always) forget to think about the link between the fields full of vegetables and the masses of rubbish we create daily. It is a pleasure to walk along cornfields, and rest one’s glance on the yellow plants, or walk into orchards and smell fruity scents. Yet at the same time under our feet there are ebbs and flows of different liquids, safe as the water, unsafe as the chemical fertilizers or even more unsafe as asbestos and gas leaks.

© Chrysalis Films

In Italy we are recording more and more cases of contaminated fields, especially because of the percolate liquid, which is the black and extremely toxic substance produced by landfill waste; very often rather than being drained and captured to be properly disposed of it is just being allowed to run into rivers or land near the landfills. This fact, which should be seen as an emergency by everyone, doesn’t seem to be considered by society and by the political system. But it concerns all our lives because it concerns food and water. So what might we do, or better what do we have to do?

Emeralda Calabria and Andrea D’Ambrosio have made a documentary, Biutifùl Cauntri, to raise awareness on this subject. The Italian documentary (Special Mention in the Torino Film Festival 2007) shows different stories, all connected to the toxic illegal waste in Naples and to its social-sanitary-economic and human repercussions.

Amongst others the story of some shepherds families who, without any other possibility, see their sheep die of dioxin poisoning. The words said by one of them explain the gravity of a situation which gets stuck in a conspiracy of silence: “the sheep eat lettuce, fennel; they eat the same things we eat, produce of the land. That’s how sheep got dioxin inside… here everything is polluted… but they’re still selling fruits”.

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Another event tells us about the start of a long investigation which has unveiled a world of illegal dumping: hundreds of thousands tons of extremely toxic and dangerous waste (powders to break down toxic fumes in factories, a huge variety of waste with a very high percentage of cadmium, aluminium and arsenic…). The biggest problem has been that, through a series of illegal practises, this toxic waste has been used by eco-criminals as agricultural compost. So it then ends up in people’s dinners…

The documentary uses a simple technique to report a huge problem: images flow over open air landfills, fields surrounded by factories, and with these images the words of people, down in this world of waste without wishing it, or fighting, with daily bravery, environmental crimes. The waste problem concerns first of all Naples, Italy and the corrupt Italian political system, always linked to the Mafia power but at the same time concerning all of us because when we talk about illegal waste disposal and the environmental crisis, we talk about food.

by Mirtha Sozzi

Hubert Sauper (Austria, Belgium, France 2004)

darwin’s nightmare Le Cauchemar de Darwin

and more...

In the 1960s 35 Nile perches were introduced to the Victoria Lake where they wiped out most of the population of domestic fish (more than 400 species) and affected the ecosystem of the lake. In the past decades, the Nile perch became a real export hit and all along the coast of the lake factories for fish processing emerged, supported by the European Union (EU). Today the EU is the main market for the Nile perches … or rather was, until the release of Darwin’s Nightmare!

The film suggests that the local population doesn’t benefit from this export gain. Quite on the contrary, a lot of

people starve and it feels strange to see that the fish is exported to Europe instead of being sold where needed.

Sauper contrasts this with images of a famine in Tanzania, with images of sacks of crops sent by western countries. He also shows very cruel images of the re-use of fish rests: a woman is standing in waste and maggots are crawling about her feet while she is hanging up fishes to dry. The film suggests that the stockfish - which is made out of the dried fish rests is eaten by humans later. This is only one aspect of the film, which was later contested by European newspapers and experts.

© coop99

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Darwin’s Nightmare is a Austrian-Belgian-French documentary which evoked controversy all over the world - but especially in France - for it’s subjective documentary style. It focuses on fishing in Victoria Lake (Tanzania) and it’s negative effects on the local population. It also demonstrates a link between the export of fish to Europe and the import of weapons to Africa. The film won prizes in various film festivals and was nominated for an Oscar.

In November 2005 the French historian François Garçon accused Sauper of having manipulated the spectators by distorting facts (in the French revue Les Temps Modernes; Nr. 635).

Another newspaper, Le Monde, was interested in the debate and sent a reporter to the region of the Victoria Lake: he discovered that the fish carcasses are only used for feeding animals and that the fishing sector brings a lot of (informal) jobs to the region. However, the journalist confirms the arms trade by quoting an expert: for more than ten years now, there has been an exchange of fish and weapons. Another French journalist (of the television and cultural

© coop99

53 magazine Télérama) joined the debate by reclaiming that the film can be considered as art because an artist is allowed to stage the reality for cinematic purposes. This shows that the debate is not only questioning the asserted facts but is also about the way Sauper is presenting certain images which are almost unbearable to watch. Is this a kind of art and is it really necessary to see?

In Sauper’s point of view it is a very personal film and he doesn’t consider him-

self an investigative journalist. However he estimates his film as a possible bridge between knowledge and political awareness. In his opinion, a film cannot display reality; it is only the concentration of a certain reality. Sauper said in a interview with arte.tv that he is not interested in the fish but in the inequity of globalisation. According to his statement, the fish could also have been gold in Burundi, diamonds in Congo or oil in Nigeria.

is mostly a film about humans, conditions of living and about globalisation – and not primarily about fish and food.

But in fact, these categories are very linked today. Even if some consumers have changed their attitudes because of this film, there are still plenty of other non-discovered affairs. Documentaries like this can contribute to make consumers more conscious to food and it’s production ways.

At first you think that Darwin’s Nightmare

by Nina Henke

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organisers and partners.

NISI MASA is a European network gathering hundreds of young film enthusiasts in 19 countries (across the EU as well as in the neighbouring states of Croatia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Turkey and Russia).

Composed of national organisations with different profiles, its members consist of young Europeans sharing a common passion: cinema.

The association was founded in 2001. The name ‘NISI MASA’ is a reference to the film 8 ½ by Frederico Fellini, in which Marcello Mastroianni repeats the phrase Asa Nisi Masa. The film, a European cinema classic, and the sentence, an incantation belonging to no specific language, both reflect the cinematic and cross-border spirit of the network.

compilations of short films and books as a result of its activities, as well as a daily magazine (www.nisimazine. eu) during different film festivals alongside our monthly newsletter Nisimazine.

We are a non-profit organisation supported, amongst others, by the European Union, the Council of Europe, the European Cultural Foundation, the Allianz Cultural Foundation and the Fondation de France. Each project is organised by one or several member associations. All activities are coordinated by a central European Secretariat, based in Paris, France.

More information can be found on our website www.nisimasa.com.

Our aims • To discover & promote new film talents • To foster European awareness through the means of cinema • To develop cross-cultural cinema projects • To create a platform of discussion and collaboration for young European filmmakers.

NISI MASA – European Office 10 Rue de l’Echiquier 75010 Paris France Tel: +33 (0)9 71 42 71 50 Fax: +33 (0)1 53 34 62 78 Email: europe@nisimasa.com

Our main activities Throughout the year, NISI MASA organizes various events all over Europe, involving hundreds of film buffs & talents: scriptwriting and directing workshops, seminars, film screenings, etc. NISI MASA also publishes DVD

President: Simone Fenoil General Delegate: Matthieu Darras

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The Lago Film Fest, an international festival for short films, documentaries and screenwriting, was born in 2005 from the idea of Viviana Carlet, current artistic director.

A showcase in which art is given space to exhibit its multiple facets, its main aim is to allow audiences to watch cinematographic productions which otherwise would remain unknown to the wider public.

In the small town of Lago a screen is placed in the water for the main projections. The courtyards become a cluster of small “theatres”, animated not only by moving images, but also concerts and artistic performances.

The competition is divided into three macro-sections: short fictions, documentaries and the Rodolfo Sonego Award for screenwriting. To these are added special mentions such as “best animation”, “best short film for children” (Unicef Award), the Regione del Veneto Award, and for the first time this year, the special prizes “Cortissimo” and “Altri Segni” (dedicated to experimental works).

Each evening there is a thematic encounter which goes deeper into these various areas of interest: documentary, video art, cinema for youngsters, screenwriting. On these occasions well-known guest experts contribute their individual testimonials.

The awards themselves are created by different artists, who offer their valuable works to the winning directors.

In previous years in Lago a residence has been organised for young artists who have worked on group-concieved projects linked to the regional territory.

This year for the first time the festival is enrichened by a section on video art, put together with the help of the DOCVA (Documentation Center for Visual Arts) in Milano, reinforcing its dedication to the less accessible cinematographic and artistic panorama.

The festival is all this and more. It is also composed of associations which collaborate in the organisation of special events and out of competition screenings.

With the usual curiosity and open spirit which characterises the Lago Film Fest, the fifth edition will host with great pleasure the “Matter of Taste” project of the NISI MASA association, welcoming this possibility for enrichment and cultural exchange.

Lago Film Fest Vicolo De Noni, 31020 Revine Lago (TV) Italia T: +39 320 36 81 519 Email: info@lagofest.org www.lagofest.org

Daazo.com - European Short Film Centre is a Cinema/Media project with a growing collection of professional short films and a community web platform for young filmmakers. Its collection is strictly specified for short films: you can watch, upload and share these works; as a centre for short films, Daazo also highlights the most important news from the world of shorts, as well as the latest festival deadlines, interviews, essays. All of these features are for free.

To collect and present a selection of the best free-to-view European shorts is a unique mission on the Internet. This way Daazo encourages young film makers, film schools, festivals to upload and disseminate their films via its platform - helping them taking their first steps in the business, having “dynamic copies” of their works. This is an opportunity to promote themselves, finding viewers, feedbacks and producers. Daazo takes part in applications - like Matter of Taste - and in filmmaking workshops too.

Daazo’s aim is to create the perfect platform for short films.

Nowadays shorts are being more successful than ever. Appearing online, getting a wider range of audience, short films are made not only for festivals, film schools or workshops, but for literally world wide distribution.

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Daazo Film and Media Ltd. Bartók Béla 61.

1113 Budapest, Hungary Email: zoltanaprily@daazo.com / danieldeak@daazo.com www.daazo.com

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editor-in-chief: jude lister

jude@nisimasa.com

editors: nina henke gülcin șahin maximilien van aertryck maartje alders

nina.henke@gmx.net gulcin@nisimasa.com max@nisimasa.com maartje@nisimasa.com

graphic design: maartje alders luis sens photography: luis sens contributors: maximilien van aertryck stefan bössner joanna gallardo julia sabina gutiérrez nina henke jude lister emilie padellec atso pärnänen itxaso elosua ramírez gülcin șahin mirtha sozzi special thanks to: viviana carlet dario ferroni esra demirkiran silvia taborelli juan pittaluga helena mielonen

credits.

info@luissens.com.ar

project director: matthieu darras project manager / artistic coordinator: jude lister project coordinators: nina henke gülcin șahin

website design: nina henke dániel déak zoltán aprily project visual: lasse lecklin

this is a publication of

10 Rue de l’Echiquier 75010 Paris tel.: +33 (0)9 71 42 71 50 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com