Stomachs not rumbling as food hits Berlin Fest
Güncelleme Tarihi:
AFP
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Şubat 12, 2009 00:00
BERLIN - This week's Berlin Film Festival has no less than three documentaries on food Ñ but none of them improves your cooking skills and one of them will probably make your stomach churn, not rumble.
Described as a "civilized horror movie" by film industry bible Variety, Robert Kenner's "Food Inc." is a no-holds-barred expose of a highly mechanized industry, very different from the packaging images displayed on supermarket shelves.
In scenes that would not look out of place in Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times," Kenner shows chickens that never see light and the processes that mince goes through before ending up as hamburgers.
"The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you're eating, because if you knew you might not want to eat it," explains Eric Schlosser in the film, author of the hard-hitting book "Fast Food Nation."
The documentary, enthusiastically received at the Berlinale which runs until Feb. 15, is focused on the United States but Kenner said that the not-so-mouth-watering practices it uncovers are omnipresent. "We wanted to suggest that people can do something, that we are part of the solution. We have to vote with our fork, three times a day," he said.
Other films
"Terra Madre," meanwhile, gives some hope. Made by Italian filmmaker Ermanno Olmi, the documentary is about a meeting in the Italian city of Turin last October of more than 6,000 farmers, shepherds, fishermen and cooks from over 130 countries. The get-together was organized by the "Slow Food" movement, which believes that what we eat should be produced cleanly and traded fairly Ñ and that food and those who produce it should be a focal point of our lives once more.
Another Berlinale gastronomic offering is "Nos enfants nous accuseront" (That Should Not Be Ñ Our Children Will Accuse Us) by French director Jean Paul Jaud.
Released in France last month, Jaud's film is a plea for food to be grown organically.
In scenes that would not look out of place in Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times," Kenner shows chickens that never see light and the processes that mince goes through before ending up as hamburgers.
"The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you're eating, because if you knew you might not want to eat it," explains Eric Schlosser in the film, author of the hard-hitting book "Fast Food Nation."
The documentary, enthusiastically received at the Berlinale which runs until Feb. 15, is focused on the United States but Kenner said that the not-so-mouth-watering practices it uncovers are omnipresent. "We wanted to suggest that people can do something, that we are part of the solution. We have to vote with our fork, three times a day," he said.
Other films
"Terra Madre," meanwhile, gives some hope. Made by Italian filmmaker Ermanno Olmi, the documentary is about a meeting in the Italian city of Turin last October of more than 6,000 farmers, shepherds, fishermen and cooks from over 130 countries. The get-together was organized by the "Slow Food" movement, which believes that what we eat should be produced cleanly and traded fairly Ñ and that food and those who produce it should be a focal point of our lives once more.
Another Berlinale gastronomic offering is "Nos enfants nous accuseront" (That Should Not Be Ñ Our Children Will Accuse Us) by French director Jean Paul Jaud.
Released in France last month, Jaud's film is a plea for food to be grown organically.