Tag Archives: film

The NYC Food Film Festival, or How I Legally Yanked Food from a Truck

food, , , ,

Gastrocinephiles! So you’ve watched and rewound the opening scene of Eat Drink Man Woman multiple times? Your dreams involve recreating the timpano from Big Night? Then the NYC Food Film Festival is the place to be, celebrating the year’s accomplishments in food film, food documentary, and of course, food porn. In its fifth year of running, the Food Film Fest is attracting all sorts of attention from food media, filmmakers, and even Mayor Bloomberg, who kicked off the opening ceremony by declaring “Food Film Fest Day” in New York.

I was present for the closing gala, themed “Farm to Film to Table.” Held in the Varick Room at the Tribeca Theater, the city’s student filmmakers, publicists and chefs gathered for hors d’oeuvres and cocktails made from locally sourced ingredients. Chef and Food Network star Amanda Freitag spearheaded a menu of baked crab apples with pork belly in the core, butternut squash with curry and pepitas, and roasted sunchokes with red garlic. Most interesting was the edible dirt, a powdery concoction of mushrooms served with peppery arugula. The dirt, while tasty, would’ve been better if it were warm, so I actually ended up sprinkling some over a bowl of chili for highly satisfactory results. Continue reading The NYC Food Film Festival, or How I Legally Yanked Food from a Truck →

Real Life Adventures: The Lost Photos in a Blizzard Guy

life, , , , , , , , , , ,

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmop7EAY1Zg]

Last Friday, I met Todd Bieber, a dude who found a canister of film while skiing in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. In a male Amelie sort of twist, he developed the photos and set out to find the photographer by making a Youtube video about the contents. The video was witty, honest, poignant in its recognition that this adventure was much too fantastic to continue. Suddenly, it had racked up a million hits and Bieber was swamped with emails postulating on who the photographer could be. After a few months of fruitless leads, a breakthrough: he received an email from the photographer and immediately booked a ticket to Paris to return the film to the girl who had lost it.

This is the tale that Time magazine described as “YouTube’s greatest adventure,” crafted by the person that ABC News described as “a real life international man of mystery.” Like many others, I was forwarded the first video last winter, and left enchanted by the idea that two strangers could connect through the help of millions of good Samaritans on the internet. But was it really true? After all, Bieber is a director for UCB comedy and a writer for the Onion, and the story just seemed too perfect to be genuine. So I mulled over the ploys that people use to get attention these days, and forgot about the video entirely.

Until I stopped by the Park Slope Food Coop one evening and glanced up at a flyer. Film Night: An Evening of Personal Documentaries. Found: Lost Pictures of New York Blizzard. And there he was, sitting right next to me, wearing a red flannel shirt, dark rimmed glasses, and some scruffy facial hair. The standard hipster uniform. He gave a nervous introduction, and it was clear that he was not used to public speaking, but his face brightened as he told us the rest of his story.

So, they met in Paris. They did not fall in love and get married and live happily forever. Bieber had brought his girlfriend along anyway. The meeting was actually kind of awkward.
Continue reading Real Life Adventures: The Lost Photos in a Blizzard Guy →

Gridlock: Battling Wits at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament

culture, , , , , , ,

“For this puzzle, each answer will be a 7-letter word. I’m going to give you the first and last letters, and the middle 5 letters will be an anagram of the word ‘inset.’ If you think you know the answer, yell it out. Ready? F, S.”

“Fitness!”

“D, T.”

“Dentist!”

“J, G.”

“Jesting!”

“Ok, this next combination has two possible answers. D, Y.”

“Destiny—and density!”

I scribbled furiously. All around me, the best puzzle solving minds in America were gleefully shouting out answers. Meanwhile, I could barely keep up recording the answers on paper. Clearly, my brain was missing some wiring in the verbal juggling department.

“All right, this next puzzle was one that I decided was too difficult for radio. I’m going to give you a word and you’ll add two w’s to rearrange it into a new word. So if I said ‘took,’ you would say—”

“Kowtow.”

“Apish?”

“Whipsaw!”

“Armies?”

“Swimwear!”

“Healthier?”

“…wherewithal?”

“Yes, that’s correct!”

Our host was Will Shortz, editor of the NY Times crossword puzzle and puzzle master of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Shortz is the only person known to hold a college degree in enigmatology, or the study of puzzles. But he is not alone in his love for inductive reasoning. Around me sat over 600 of the most brilliant wordsmiths, trivia buffs and mental gymnasts to have ever massaged the English alphabet. This is the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

Personally, I have never solved a crossword puzzle in my life, and I usually fill in a scant half of a Tuesday crossword before giving up. But Jenn was in town on a mission—to crush her enemies in a gridlocked tangle of wits. This was her 9th year in a row of participation. And she insisted that I would have fun at the tournament’s evening festivities, when the high stakes crossword competition gives way to more laidback verbal jousting. Who am I to say no to hanging out with crossword nerds on a Saturday night?
Continue reading Gridlock: Battling Wits at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament →

The Story of Stuff

environment, , , , , ,

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM]

This is the Story of Stuff. It is a project from Annie Leonard centered on telling how you got the stuff in your hands, who paid for it (hint: it wasn’t you) and what happens when you throw it away. It is the story of how we’re destroying our planet (but mostly just ourselves), while becoming less and less happy all the time.

Yes, it’s 20 minutes and most of you will just think “tl;dw” (too long; didn’t watch), but I hit play and couldn’t stop watching. It’s a chunk of time well-spent for anyone interested in connecting the dots between many of our environmental, economic and social problems. Certainly, some of the information was played up for dramatic effect, but overall, I found the film to be clear, concise and informative for the intelligent layperson.

Check it out.

Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto

academics, , , , ,

Tomorrow marks the opening of one of the sustainable food world’s most prestigious events, Terra Madre (or “mother earth”). This is a biennial conference sponsored by Slow Food since 2004, a meeting of farmers, chefs, producers, researchers, students, and other people who want to revolutionize the way we feed ourselves. Over the next five days, 8.000 people from 150 nations will gather in my backyard (Turin) to share ideas, make new friends and revel in the solidarity that we may be few but strong.

Simultaneously, Salone del Gusto will be happening next door to Terra Madre. This is a food fair for artisanal producers to demonstrate and market their wares. About two-thirds of exhibitors hail from Italy, and the remainder will be coming from all over the rest of the world. There are also chef demonstrations, lectures and tasting workshops on everything from Sámi cuisine (think Nordic wild berries, reindeer and elk), to the Vermouths of Catalonia.

For my part, I have volunteered as part of the University of Gastronomic Sciences audio/visual troupe. Our scrappy crew of nine students will divide into teams of three, and float between the buildings to document university-run and youth movement events, interview students and capture the zeitgeist of the conference. The hours will be long (on Saturday, it looks like I’ll be on the job from 9 am to 9 pm), but the rewards will be substantial. Besides, I have always wanted to learn about filmmaking, so here is my relatively low-stress chance to get acquainted with neutral density filters and techniques of cinematography. Did I mention that the a/v troupe meetings have been almost entirely in Italian? Vocabulary that I never thought I would need to know in Italian: frames per second, diaphragm aperture. Did you know that in the US video is generally recorded at 30 fps, while in Europe video is captured at 25 fps? Me neither. We plan to cut, edit and post clips at the end of each day, so maybe some of my footage will make it online in the next few days.

I am also co-hosting a tasting workshop at Salone del Gusto with UNISG President Carlo Catani. The workshop is titled “New Orleans in a Cocktail,” and our guest will be Chris McMillan, one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail, and bartender at Uncommon Bar in the Renaissance Père Marquette hotel in New Orleans.

Anyway, the following is a video from the 2008 conference (not created by UNISG students) that gives you a taste of the global circus that is about to descend upon Torino:

[vimeo vimeo.com/4417753]