Friday, March 17, 2017

Film Friday- Two Short Films from "The Perennial Plate"

by Nomad

The two films I've chosen this Friday are actually a pair of episodes from the two-time James Beard Award-winning online weekly documentary series, The Perennial Plate.
This show is a dedicated to socially responsible and adventurous eating.
All of the episodes can be found here.

Daniel Klein, a chef and activist, teamed up with filmmaker Mirra Fine and began a tour of the world to explore the wonders, complexities and stories behind the ever more connected global food system. In an interview, Klein said:
We are generally looking at stories where people are doing things differently than conventional agriculture. We believe that the food system is broken and as a result we have serious problems with our health, economy and climate...As we travel the world, it’s certainly an adventure—along that adventure we try to make good choices about what we eat, the way we interact/travel, etc.
This first film deals with Lupe Gonzalo a migrant from Guatemala now living in Immokalee Florida (where 1/3 of the tomatoes in our grocery stores are grown). She reveals what life is like for a migrant worker and this explains why so few Americans would take her place.



Our second selection from the series is "Faces of Turkey." Not too surprising choice, I suppose. I thought you might enjoy it.



Interestingly, there were a large number of pissy comments on Vimeo, the site that hosted this film. All of them came from Turks who seemed extremely upset at the makers of the film for not showing the "real" Turkey. Here's an example:
This is a great film, but it doesn’t represent all Turkish people. You have taken only the part of the society which is more traditional, maybe because that is more interesting for you, more exotic not like us. But if you want to show the people of Turkey you have to show all types of people, not just from the villages and the South-East.
The filmmakers pointed out politely that many of the faces were residents of Istanbul, Turkey's most cosmopolitan city. Personally, I can say these are very much the interesting faces of the kind people I see every week at the farmer's market.

In any case, let me know what you think of the films.