Posted by Greg Clow in events, events upcoming, films, news and media on March 21, 2007 at 11:27 pm
With the warm weather in Toronto comes film festival season, and one of the best is Hot Docs, North America's largest documentary festival.
As always, the 100+ films at the fest - which runs April 19th to 29th this year - cover a wide array of topics, including a few related to food and farming. Here's a handy list, complete with a link to each film's info page on the Hot Docs website...
All In This Tea
(USA 2007 | Run time: 70 min. | Director: Gina Leibrecht, Les Blank)
A guided tour through the wondrous world of tea, the latest film from distinguished documentarian Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht follows American tea importer David Lee Hoffman to some of the most remote regions of China in search of the world's finest teas. A passionate supporter of sustainable, environmentally sound practices, Hoffman is a champion of the independent tea farmers who adhere to ancient, handcrafted methods. Explaining the delicate balance between art and science in tea leaf cultivation, Hoffman strives to bring China's teas to the world market, but is frustrated by the business politics of giant tea factories. Nevertheless, he revels in the medicinal, meditative and transformative power of tea, not to mention its tangible connection to the earth and its timeless relationship to previous generations. Blank's longtime friend, fellow filmmaker and tea lover Werner Herzog, appears at one point savouring a special cup of tea that tastes "like a forest, leaves on the ground, it has just rained, the rain has stopped, it's damp, and you're taking a walk. And somehow that's all in this tea."
Arthur's Paradise
(Canada 2006 | Run time: 50 min. | Director: Luc Beauchamp)
Impressionistic and poetic, brutal and chaotic, hilarious and fantastic, Arthur's Paradise is anything but a conventional documentary. Every morning Arthur feeds the pigs and chickens on his farm to the hauntingly beautiful voice of opera singer Victoria Rossellini piped into the barn from an old 33 record. Superb cinematography captures the birth of a litter of piglets, Arthur's routine tail, genital and teeth clipping, a mating session of a sow in heat and the selecting of young pigs for the factory-all of the violent and caring acts in a farmer's day. Until, one morning, the record of Rossellini disappears, all hell breaks loose and the film morphs into a fantasy: the pigs go on a hunger strike, chickens cluck out catastrophic warnings and Arthur frantically tries to restore harmony by playing other music, resulting in opera singers, a disco celebrity, and an entire mariachi band chasing him around the barn. A brilliant music score and sound design replace dialogue and, while we may argue about genre, there can be no argument over its stunning originality. In French with English subtitles.
Eat The Suburbs
(Australia 2006 | Run time: 9 min. | Director: Tanya Curnow)
Peak oil theorist Richard Heinberg believes global oil production will climax in 2010, sending our oil-dependent food infrastructure into a tailspin. Modern conventional farming uses 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy. A group of young permaculture activists in Melbourne is trying to address this imbalance. One garden at a time, they are digging in and converting suburban lawns to tiny organic farms.
Milk in the Land: Ballad of an American Drink
(USA 2007 | Run time: 90 min. | Director: Ariana Gerstein, Monteith McCollum)
Milk in the Land tells the disquieting untold story of North America's staple beverage. Farmers, activists, ethicists and historians detail milk's fascinating birth as a replacement for breast milk and booze, and its subsequent evolution into a massive industry. Milk is much more than a mere refreshment, it is also a powerful symbol of America, the embodiment of progress and perfect health. Animation and collage bring milk ads and slogans to life, while stop-motion and time-lapse effects add visual tremor to this history of greed versus need. Behind the images of idyllic pastoral landscapes and happy cows lurks the reality of mechanized milking machines and genetically engineered animals. Yesterday's land of plenty has been transformed into today's land of waste in this truly haunting portrait of industrialization.
Strawberry Fields
(Israel 2006 | Run time: 60 min. | Director: Ayelet Heller)
The interminable drama and conflict of life in the occupied territories is played out against a green field of cultivated strawberries in this creative documentary that provides a fresh take on a much debated and seemingly endless human tragedy. Filmmaker Ayelet Heller trains her camera on the small red fruit and all those who are charged with nurturing them from seedlings in the Gaza Strip en route to their destination in European gourmet food shops. All the while, the disengagement, the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections and the ongoing battles, bombings and rhetoric continue to rage in the background. The occupation, globalization and politics-as-usual are all challenges facing the berries and those who work the land in this rich, nuanced and award-winning film where Mother Nature is but one of the forces at play.
