BEAUTIFUL FOOD STORIES HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
We love stories about food. Today, we are featuring a few documentaries from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, as well as several other feature-length and documentary shorts about food, where it comes from, and the personal journeys travelled in the course of growing, preparing, and eating it.
HERDERS
What’s it like to live as a nomad, moving your family and your yak herds from place to place, following the seasons and the proclivity of grasslands to score some food? You are about to find out!
Through a series of virtual reality experiences, Herders, a new film directed by Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël, will take you to the steppes of Mongolia and give you a taste of how one of the world’s last remaining indigenous cultures eats and lives.
Now appearing at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
CITY OF GOLD
Los Angeles has a bad rap as a superficial place, devoid of meaningful culture. But City of Gold, a new documentary by Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold, shows the city off as a rich thick stew of ethnic cooking and salty-sweet soul.
Gold is on a continuous quest to find the dishes that may shock even the most sophisticated foodies among us, as they comfort and inspire the immigrant fringes of our society. Get ready to dive into Oaxacan grasshopper soup, hand-cut tonkotsu ramen, and unctuous pad see ew.
But it is not just the secret family recipes that grab our interest, it is the flavor-packed stories of the people who stir the pots and add extraordinary character wherever they are able.
Now appearing at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
THE COLLECTORS: BEEKEEPER
The Collectors: Beekeeper is an important documentary short that raises awareness about the fragile state of bees, a critical part of the ecosystem that creates and sustains food for the humanity. Dennis van Engelsdorp, former state apiarist for Pennsylvania and current entomology professor at the University of Maryland, is worried. And we should be too.
Now appearing at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
SEMISWEET: LIFE IN CHOCOLATE
This is a sweet documentary, by Michael Allcock, about chocolate, as it grows and is processed in three continents and in small batches. It follows the personal journeys of very separate people who are all connected through their relationships with chocolate.
The filmmakers follow four stories:
In Northern Canada, Ron and Nadine handcraft chocolates tied to a mission to save the planet. They count Woody Harrelson and Sting among their fans.
In Hershey, Pennsylvania, considered by many to be a chocolate capital of the world, a 4th-generation Hershey employee, plays up the romance of this confection.
In West Africa, Noufou and Mamoutou risk their lives to work at cacao plantations.
In Paris, France, top chocolatier Patrick Roger takes 150 pounds of chocolate and turns it into a giant ape that he hopes can save the rainforests of Borneo.
And then there is the Choco-locate app… It will tell you where in the world to find your favorite chocolate treats. Click here to download Choco-locate.
FOOD CURATED
“Food is so rich. So personal. It’s never just about a bite of food.” -- Liza Mosquito de Guia
Liza Mosquito de Guia’s films are not appearing at the Sundance Film Festival, although they might some day. But we felt compelled to include her collection of documentary shorts here because she so passionately loves to tell really good stories about food.
De Guia’s films mainly focus on where exceptionally delicious food comes from. They dig deep, not just into the origins of the animals and plants upon which we feed, but into the lives and artistries of the people who grow and prepare them for us.
“I truly believe good food comes from deep down, from someone’s personal mission to feed you well, to help you discover flavors, textures and foods you’re missing out on,” De Guia explains.
Showcasing the people, ideas, and techniques that created edible jewels, her foodie documentaries are indeed tasty morsels to savor.
Check out Food Curated, De Guia’s blog, as well as her charming TED Talk.
This week we are celebrating Beautiful Stories, with most of our posts featuring films and performances making their debut right now at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. BeautifulNow will be bringing you stories on location, live from the Festival, so stay tuned here for posts and check our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr pages and BeautifulNow Sundance page for live updates.
Read more about Beautiful Stories, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 Beautiful Stories Told Through New Films @ Sundance Now and Stunning Stories of Science and Tech @ Sundance.
Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Stories in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 02.1.15. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!
PHOTO CREDITS:
- Image: Courtesy of Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël. Herders.
- Image: Courtesy of Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël. Herders.
- Image: Courtesy of Big Time PR. City of Gold.
- Image: Courtesy of Stick Figure Studios. The Collectors: Beekeeper.
- Image: Courtesy of Choco-locate. Semisweet.
- Image: Courtesy of Choco-locate. Semisweet.
- Image: Courtesy of Choco-locate. Semisweet.
- Image: Courtesy of Choco-locate. Semisweet.
- Image: Courtesy of Choco-locate. Semisweet.
- Image: Courtesy of Food Curated. The Secret Is In the Suffering: Bodhi Tree Farm.
- Photo: Courtesy of Food Curated. Untitled.
- Video: Courtesy of Tedx Talks. The magic of real: Liza Mosquito de Guia at TEDxBrooklyn.
