NewportFILM Outdoors, a unique celebration of documentary moviemaking that is held in some of the most iconic locations in one of the most storied summer resorts in America, has unveiled its latest line-up of films for its summer season.
They include “It’s Only Life After All,” a look at the Indigo Girls; “After the Bite,” an examination of a community’s reaction to a shark attack; and “Invisible Beauty,” the story of pioneering model, agent and activist, Bethann Hardison. What makes the Newport, Rhode Island event so memorable is that these screenings take place on the lawns of mansions like Marble House and The Elms, as well as historical locations like Fort Adams, which hosts the annual Newport Jazz Festival, and the Newport Polo Grounds. It’s all very shades of Edith Wharton.
“Patrick and the Whale” will open the weekly series on the lawn of the Great Friends Meeting House.
They include “It’s Only Life After All,” a look at the Indigo Girls; “After the Bite,” an examination of a community’s reaction to a shark attack; and “Invisible Beauty,” the story of pioneering model, agent and activist, Bethann Hardison. What makes the Newport, Rhode Island event so memorable is that these screenings take place on the lawns of mansions like Marble House and The Elms, as well as historical locations like Fort Adams, which hosts the annual Newport Jazz Festival, and the Newport Polo Grounds. It’s all very shades of Edith Wharton.
“Patrick and the Whale” will open the weekly series on the lawn of the Great Friends Meeting House.
- 6/20/2023
- by Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
The folk music documentaries Joan Baez I Am a Noise and Alexandria Bombach’s Indigo Girls documentary It’s Only Life After All are getting international premieres as part of the Hot Docs Festival, which unveiled its 2023 lineup on Tuesday.
Co-directors Miri Navasky, Karen O’Connor and Maeve O’Boyle’s portrait of Baez, the American folk singing legend and civil rights activist, bowed in Berlin. Bombach’s film about Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, who became folk-rock duo Indigo Girls and eventually environmental activists, premiered at Sundance.
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival’s 30th edition will be filled with a host of films about activists, as the festival is set to open with a screening of Twice Colonized, Danish director Lin Alluna’s film about Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and protector of her ancestral lands, Aaju Peter.
The Danish film, which had a world premiere at Sundance, will also launch the Copenhagen documentary film festival Cph:dox.
Co-directors Miri Navasky, Karen O’Connor and Maeve O’Boyle’s portrait of Baez, the American folk singing legend and civil rights activist, bowed in Berlin. Bombach’s film about Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, who became folk-rock duo Indigo Girls and eventually environmental activists, premiered at Sundance.
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival’s 30th edition will be filled with a host of films about activists, as the festival is set to open with a screening of Twice Colonized, Danish director Lin Alluna’s film about Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and protector of her ancestral lands, Aaju Peter.
The Danish film, which had a world premiere at Sundance, will also launch the Copenhagen documentary film festival Cph:dox.
- 3/28/2023
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
by Abe Friedtanzer
There are many ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic has forever changed the world. Among the hardest-hit industries has been food, with in-person restaurants closed for an extended period of time and many typically available items scarcely found throughout the early months of the pandemic. The road to recovery has been a difficult one and has sadly forced many longtime establishments to shutter permanently. Festival Favorite documentary Food and Country, stopping at SXSW after its premiere at Sundance, looks at the deeper history of food in America and the tectonic shift that has recently happened.
Food writer Ruth Reichl is the guide for this educational journey, one that starts decades ago when quick cooking was advertised as the new hot thing...
There are many ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic has forever changed the world. Among the hardest-hit industries has been food, with in-person restaurants closed for an extended period of time and many typically available items scarcely found throughout the early months of the pandemic. The road to recovery has been a difficult one and has sadly forced many longtime establishments to shutter permanently. Festival Favorite documentary Food and Country, stopping at SXSW after its premiere at Sundance, looks at the deeper history of food in America and the tectonic shift that has recently happened.
Food writer Ruth Reichl is the guide for this educational journey, one that starts decades ago when quick cooking was advertised as the new hot thing...
- 3/17/2023
- by Abe Friedtanzer
- FilmExperience
Sundance 2023: ‘Food and Country’ Directed by Laura Gabbert
Premieres Section
During the lockdown time of Covid, trailblazing food writer Ruth Reichl started to make a documentary to show Covid and the shutdown’s effect on the food system, from farmers to restaurants. But her worries over the fate of small farmers, ranchers, and chefs as they wrestled with both immediate and systemic challenges also exposed the broken food system as political and social, and ended with her forging true relationships on a personal level with the originators, suppliers and consumers in the food chain.
Starting in March 2020 Reichl reached out to those who were innovativing new ways of structuring their businesses. She speaks with Brandon Jew, a San Francisco restauranteer in Chinatown, who notes that people are scared to go to Chinatown because Covid has been politicized as Chinese. Reem Assil, a young Arab woman with a restaurant in Oakland, makes her staff co-owners as a way to share and get through this time. Reichl’s contemporary and close friend in the Bay Area, Alice Waters, the first to use local homegrown produce in her restaurant Chez Panisse discusses how much better it is to deal directly with the farmers rather than middlemen.
She speaks to farmer Bob Jones Jr. of the White Oak Pastures, fourth generation farmer who in the mid 90s gradually moved away from his father’s industrialized farming techniques as it produced waste and did not consider the welfare of its animals who need to express their instinctive behaviors. Over 20 years he changed the soil from a dead mineral medium to a live, organic medium teaming with life. Supplying the food conscious restaurant innovators directly also mandated starting his own meat processing. “Everything is tied to everything else,” he states.
Bob Jones Jr. of the White Oak Pastures
Rancher Steve Stratford discusses the cattle business as a US and international problem and points out there are only four big meat packers, so large that if two don’t operate because of a problem like swine fever, the nation suffers and lots of livestock goes unused. “It is all about how cheaply you can produce and it results in waste that could feed a small country. Other countries do not have the discretionary income of American because they spend on food.” Amercans buy food cheaply, but it is problematic (and inferior) because it is mass produced
Meat producers and consumers must rely on these four meat packing companies. Jbs is 100% Brazilian owned, National Beef is 51% Brazilian and Tyson and Cargill are in the hands of two giant American corporations. The Department of Justice Anti Trust Regulatory should take action and the government should encourage smaller meat plants every 3 to 400 miles supplying 2–3% of the daily slaughter and the meat producers should own the plants. Now, should one of the four go down, 15% of the food supply is impacted.
Since the time of this writing, the N.Y. Times has published an expose on meat packers and food processing plants in general which villainize them even more! Their knowing use of illegal immigrant child labor is chilling and will make readers of this and viewers of the film even more passionate about eating well and avoiding the evil of unhealthy processed and mass produced food. See FoodProcessing.com reflect the N.Y. Times article on Feb. 26's exhaustive investigation that went far beyond the early-February fine against Packers Sanitation Services Inc., which provides mostly nighttime/ third-shift sanitation services to many food & beverage plants. That investigation by the U.S. Dept. of Labor found at least 102 children 13 to 17 years old working for the contract sanitation company in 13 meat-processing facilities in eight states. The list specified underage immigrant workers at Jbs USA's Grand Island, Neb., plant, Cargill plant in Dodge City, Kan., a Jbs facility in Worthington, Minn., Buckhead Meat, George's Inc., Gibbon Packing, Greater Omaha Packing, Maple Leaf Farms, Turkey Valley Farms and Tyson. At least three of the minors reportedly suffered injuries while on the job with Pssi. Read the NY Times expose and weep. You will surely become more conscious of the issues raised in this documentary which never mention the abuse of child labor. Farmers (and ranchers) must take out huge bank loans every year at the beginning of planting, hope for good crops to pay off the loan and in the end, make very little profit whereas the suppliers and food processing firms make millions as they supply supermarkets and chain restaurants. America’s largest corporate restaurant food supplier Sysco has 32 states to supply and is supported by Usda. Even during Covid, Usda bailed them out and shut out the smaller suppliers who then must abide by Sysco’s system which in 2021 made $51 billion in sales.
In the early 1900s there were more Black farmers than White. In the 1920s 19% of farms were Black owned. Today it is 1%. Food Apartheid is explored in the course of Ruth’s discussions. Of the 57,000 farms in NY State, ony 139 are Black. 96% of the land owners of farms are white; government interventions help Whites, not Blacks, with subsidies. This makes the food system structurally racist.
As part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, the minimum wage was established. But black workers, who had been hired as food service workers immediately after slavery, were not included. They were not paid wages at all. They were expected to live off of tips. Tips had just been introduced to the US from Europe. The Blacks, along with immigrants, other racial minorities, women, and the disabled were not included in Roosevelt’s New Deal minimum wages and in fact, only 80 years later did legistration finally grant them a miunum wage of $2.13 per hour. The lowest paid employee is the restaurant worker; next are the farmworkers.
This principal of cheap abundant food started after World War II hand in glove with the arms race when the huge stockpile of ammunition was turned into fertilizer and the government encouraged farms to replace animals with machines thus creating the factory model of food production along with a great debt taken on by the farmers. It was seen as a way to fight Communism to have the cheapest most abundant food on earth. The nutritive value of American food from 1940 to 2000 fell to 40%.
When President Nixon and Khrushchev held the “Kitchen Debates” a point of pride was fast food. The industrialization of food and food processing, and the rise of chain restaurant limited the number of processors and wholesalers to be used by farmers and ranchers. This drove farmers to marginal living as the middlemen’s high costs took most of the farmers’ and cattlemen’s profits.
As you can see, I learned a great deal from this film and found it fascinating as future viewers will as well. America’s decades-old policy of producing cheap food at all costs hobbles farmers and ranchers who are striving to stay independent. Ruth Reichl, a fascinating woman in her own right, coming of age on a commune founded by her then husband in Berkeley in the 60s and writing little vignettes about food for marginal publications, she became a renowned food writer for the New York and Los Angeles Times. As Reichl witnesses and follows intrepid characters puzzling through intractable circumstances, she takes stock of the path she hersef has traveled and the ideals she left behind. Through her eyes, we learn to understand the humanity and struggle behind the food we eat.
Food is elemental; without it we die, but with it, we can either become healthier or ill, depending upon its provenance and processing. Cheaper is not better. Food and Country, along Sundance’s other film Against the Tide, and the 2018 Telluride/ Toronto premiering film The Biggest Little Farmshould be seen in economic classes, culinary arts schools and ecological studies.
Filmmaker Laura Gabbert (City of Gold, 2015 Sundance Film Festival) with Reichl gives the expansive history behind an ever-more consolidating food industry. The film covers a rich cultural spectrum, from fine dining rooms to farmlands, discovering passionate, inspirational changemakers along the way. Laura Gabbert’s City of Gold (Sundance, SXSW 2015), was released theatrically in 50+ markets by IFC and included in Vogue magazine’s “78 best documentaries of all time.” Gabbert also directed the feature documentaries Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles (Tribeca 2020, IFC/Hulu), No Impact Man (Sundance 2009, Oscilloscope), and Sunset Story (Tribeca 2005, Independent Lens).
Producer Caroline Libresco was a programmer for Sundance for twenty years before leaving to produce. She is known for Disclosure (2020), American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013) and Sunset Story (2003).
Producer Paula P. Manzanedo is known for Memory, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and Dive (2022).
Directed and Produced By: Laura Gabbert (City of Gold)
Produced By: Ruth Reichl, Paula P. Manzanedo, Caroline Libresco
Executive Produced By: Jamie Wolf, Nathalie Seaver, Sigrid Dyekjær, Melony Lewis, Adam Lewis, Jana Edelbaum, Rachel Cohen, Janet Tittiger, Peter Tittiger, Jenn Lee Smith, Andrea van Beuren
Jessica Lacy and Oliver Wheeler of Range Media Partners, a subsidary of Anton Films is representing the film which to date seems to have no U.S. or international distribution set.
99 minutes
Sundance Film FestivalFilm FestivalsDocumentaryWomenFood...
Premieres Section
During the lockdown time of Covid, trailblazing food writer Ruth Reichl started to make a documentary to show Covid and the shutdown’s effect on the food system, from farmers to restaurants. But her worries over the fate of small farmers, ranchers, and chefs as they wrestled with both immediate and systemic challenges also exposed the broken food system as political and social, and ended with her forging true relationships on a personal level with the originators, suppliers and consumers in the food chain.
Starting in March 2020 Reichl reached out to those who were innovativing new ways of structuring their businesses. She speaks with Brandon Jew, a San Francisco restauranteer in Chinatown, who notes that people are scared to go to Chinatown because Covid has been politicized as Chinese. Reem Assil, a young Arab woman with a restaurant in Oakland, makes her staff co-owners as a way to share and get through this time. Reichl’s contemporary and close friend in the Bay Area, Alice Waters, the first to use local homegrown produce in her restaurant Chez Panisse discusses how much better it is to deal directly with the farmers rather than middlemen.
She speaks to farmer Bob Jones Jr. of the White Oak Pastures, fourth generation farmer who in the mid 90s gradually moved away from his father’s industrialized farming techniques as it produced waste and did not consider the welfare of its animals who need to express their instinctive behaviors. Over 20 years he changed the soil from a dead mineral medium to a live, organic medium teaming with life. Supplying the food conscious restaurant innovators directly also mandated starting his own meat processing. “Everything is tied to everything else,” he states.
Bob Jones Jr. of the White Oak Pastures
Rancher Steve Stratford discusses the cattle business as a US and international problem and points out there are only four big meat packers, so large that if two don’t operate because of a problem like swine fever, the nation suffers and lots of livestock goes unused. “It is all about how cheaply you can produce and it results in waste that could feed a small country. Other countries do not have the discretionary income of American because they spend on food.” Amercans buy food cheaply, but it is problematic (and inferior) because it is mass produced
Meat producers and consumers must rely on these four meat packing companies. Jbs is 100% Brazilian owned, National Beef is 51% Brazilian and Tyson and Cargill are in the hands of two giant American corporations. The Department of Justice Anti Trust Regulatory should take action and the government should encourage smaller meat plants every 3 to 400 miles supplying 2–3% of the daily slaughter and the meat producers should own the plants. Now, should one of the four go down, 15% of the food supply is impacted.
Since the time of this writing, the N.Y. Times has published an expose on meat packers and food processing plants in general which villainize them even more! Their knowing use of illegal immigrant child labor is chilling and will make readers of this and viewers of the film even more passionate about eating well and avoiding the evil of unhealthy processed and mass produced food. See FoodProcessing.com reflect the N.Y. Times article on Feb. 26's exhaustive investigation that went far beyond the early-February fine against Packers Sanitation Services Inc., which provides mostly nighttime/ third-shift sanitation services to many food & beverage plants. That investigation by the U.S. Dept. of Labor found at least 102 children 13 to 17 years old working for the contract sanitation company in 13 meat-processing facilities in eight states. The list specified underage immigrant workers at Jbs USA's Grand Island, Neb., plant, Cargill plant in Dodge City, Kan., a Jbs facility in Worthington, Minn., Buckhead Meat, George's Inc., Gibbon Packing, Greater Omaha Packing, Maple Leaf Farms, Turkey Valley Farms and Tyson. At least three of the minors reportedly suffered injuries while on the job with Pssi. Read the NY Times expose and weep. You will surely become more conscious of the issues raised in this documentary which never mention the abuse of child labor. Farmers (and ranchers) must take out huge bank loans every year at the beginning of planting, hope for good crops to pay off the loan and in the end, make very little profit whereas the suppliers and food processing firms make millions as they supply supermarkets and chain restaurants. America’s largest corporate restaurant food supplier Sysco has 32 states to supply and is supported by Usda. Even during Covid, Usda bailed them out and shut out the smaller suppliers who then must abide by Sysco’s system which in 2021 made $51 billion in sales.
In the early 1900s there were more Black farmers than White. In the 1920s 19% of farms were Black owned. Today it is 1%. Food Apartheid is explored in the course of Ruth’s discussions. Of the 57,000 farms in NY State, ony 139 are Black. 96% of the land owners of farms are white; government interventions help Whites, not Blacks, with subsidies. This makes the food system structurally racist.
As part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, the minimum wage was established. But black workers, who had been hired as food service workers immediately after slavery, were not included. They were not paid wages at all. They were expected to live off of tips. Tips had just been introduced to the US from Europe. The Blacks, along with immigrants, other racial minorities, women, and the disabled were not included in Roosevelt’s New Deal minimum wages and in fact, only 80 years later did legistration finally grant them a miunum wage of $2.13 per hour. The lowest paid employee is the restaurant worker; next are the farmworkers.
This principal of cheap abundant food started after World War II hand in glove with the arms race when the huge stockpile of ammunition was turned into fertilizer and the government encouraged farms to replace animals with machines thus creating the factory model of food production along with a great debt taken on by the farmers. It was seen as a way to fight Communism to have the cheapest most abundant food on earth. The nutritive value of American food from 1940 to 2000 fell to 40%.
When President Nixon and Khrushchev held the “Kitchen Debates” a point of pride was fast food. The industrialization of food and food processing, and the rise of chain restaurant limited the number of processors and wholesalers to be used by farmers and ranchers. This drove farmers to marginal living as the middlemen’s high costs took most of the farmers’ and cattlemen’s profits.
As you can see, I learned a great deal from this film and found it fascinating as future viewers will as well. America’s decades-old policy of producing cheap food at all costs hobbles farmers and ranchers who are striving to stay independent. Ruth Reichl, a fascinating woman in her own right, coming of age on a commune founded by her then husband in Berkeley in the 60s and writing little vignettes about food for marginal publications, she became a renowned food writer for the New York and Los Angeles Times. As Reichl witnesses and follows intrepid characters puzzling through intractable circumstances, she takes stock of the path she hersef has traveled and the ideals she left behind. Through her eyes, we learn to understand the humanity and struggle behind the food we eat.
Food is elemental; without it we die, but with it, we can either become healthier or ill, depending upon its provenance and processing. Cheaper is not better. Food and Country, along Sundance’s other film Against the Tide, and the 2018 Telluride/ Toronto premiering film The Biggest Little Farmshould be seen in economic classes, culinary arts schools and ecological studies.
Filmmaker Laura Gabbert (City of Gold, 2015 Sundance Film Festival) with Reichl gives the expansive history behind an ever-more consolidating food industry. The film covers a rich cultural spectrum, from fine dining rooms to farmlands, discovering passionate, inspirational changemakers along the way. Laura Gabbert’s City of Gold (Sundance, SXSW 2015), was released theatrically in 50+ markets by IFC and included in Vogue magazine’s “78 best documentaries of all time.” Gabbert also directed the feature documentaries Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles (Tribeca 2020, IFC/Hulu), No Impact Man (Sundance 2009, Oscilloscope), and Sunset Story (Tribeca 2005, Independent Lens).
Producer Caroline Libresco was a programmer for Sundance for twenty years before leaving to produce. She is known for Disclosure (2020), American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013) and Sunset Story (2003).
Producer Paula P. Manzanedo is known for Memory, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and Dive (2022).
Directed and Produced By: Laura Gabbert (City of Gold)
Produced By: Ruth Reichl, Paula P. Manzanedo, Caroline Libresco
Executive Produced By: Jamie Wolf, Nathalie Seaver, Sigrid Dyekjær, Melony Lewis, Adam Lewis, Jana Edelbaum, Rachel Cohen, Janet Tittiger, Peter Tittiger, Jenn Lee Smith, Andrea van Beuren
Jessica Lacy and Oliver Wheeler of Range Media Partners, a subsidary of Anton Films is representing the film which to date seems to have no U.S. or international distribution set.
99 minutes
Sundance Film FestivalFilm FestivalsDocumentaryWomenFood...
- 3/7/2023
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
Sundance 2023: ‘The Disappearance of Shere Hite’ Directed by Nicole Newnham
U.S. Documentary Competition
The Hite Report, a groundbreaking study of female sexuality, remains one of the bestselling books of all time since its publication in 1976. The Hite Report brought the female orgasm out of unspoken shadows into the light of day by revealing the most private experiences of thousands of anonymous survey respondents. Shere Hite’s findings rocked the American establishment and presaged current conversations about gender and sex.
Drawn from anonymous survey responses, the book challenged restrictive conceptions of sex and opened a dialogue in popular culture around women’s pleasure. Its charismatic author, Shere Hite, a feminist sex researcher and former model, became the public messenger of women’s secret confessions. With each subsequent bestseller, she engaged television titans in unforgettably explicit debates about sexuality while suffering the backlash her controversial findings provoked. But who remembers Shere Hite today? What led to her erasure?
The takeaway of The Hite Report was that female expression of sexuality should not be defined by patriarchal power. This idea deeply offended the male establishment and consequently, the media made as much of their wounded ideas of themselves as of the book itself whose authentic and anonymous findings were treated with intense controversy.
The astonishing beauty of Shere Hite herself lies outside of the cliche perameters of the “scholarly” (i.e., “homely) woman. And so her methodical research was called “unscientific” and was called into question (and answered smartly by her). Her background as a working-class, bisexual, former nude model with photographs appearing in Playboy did not sit well with the offended and offensive men who interviewed her on top TV shows after the book became a runaway success. All of her many identities are displayed in the movie.
Digging into exclusive archives, as well as Hite’s personal journals and the original survey responses, filmmaker Nicole Newnham transports viewers back to the 70s, a time of great societal transformation around sexuality (See Fairyland, about queer life in San Francisco, also playing here in Sundance,for another take on the 70s and Food and Country about the coming of age of California cuisine in the 70s under the guiding hands of Ruth Reichl and Alice Waters of Chez Panisse). Newnham’s revelatory portrait brings us to reconsider a pioneer who broke the ground for our current conversations about gender, sexuality, and autonomy. Her story also is a timely, cautionary tale of what too often happens to women who dare speak out.
Nicole Newnham is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary director and producer and four-time Sundance alum. She co-directed Crip Camp (2020) with Jim LeBrecht. Crip Camp was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Sundance U.S. Documentary Audience Award. Newnham’s other documentary directing credits include the Emmy-nominated films The Revolutionary Optimists, Sentenced Home, and The Rape of Europa.
U.S. Sales and Distribution: Josh Braun, Submarine Entertainment
There is no international sales agent. Maggie Pisacane at WME is the producers rep along with Josh Braun.
Directed and Produced By: Nicole Newnham (Crip Camp)
Produced By: Molly O’Brien, R.J. Cutler, Elise Pearlstein, Kimberley Ferdinando, Trevor Smith
Co-Produced By: Erica Fink, Eleanor West
Executive Produced By: Elizabeth Fischer, Liz Cole, Noah Oppenheim, Andy Berg, Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman
116 minutes
Film FestivalsWomenDocumentaryGenderSundance...
U.S. Documentary Competition
The Hite Report, a groundbreaking study of female sexuality, remains one of the bestselling books of all time since its publication in 1976. The Hite Report brought the female orgasm out of unspoken shadows into the light of day by revealing the most private experiences of thousands of anonymous survey respondents. Shere Hite’s findings rocked the American establishment and presaged current conversations about gender and sex.
Drawn from anonymous survey responses, the book challenged restrictive conceptions of sex and opened a dialogue in popular culture around women’s pleasure. Its charismatic author, Shere Hite, a feminist sex researcher and former model, became the public messenger of women’s secret confessions. With each subsequent bestseller, she engaged television titans in unforgettably explicit debates about sexuality while suffering the backlash her controversial findings provoked. But who remembers Shere Hite today? What led to her erasure?
The takeaway of The Hite Report was that female expression of sexuality should not be defined by patriarchal power. This idea deeply offended the male establishment and consequently, the media made as much of their wounded ideas of themselves as of the book itself whose authentic and anonymous findings were treated with intense controversy.
The astonishing beauty of Shere Hite herself lies outside of the cliche perameters of the “scholarly” (i.e., “homely) woman. And so her methodical research was called “unscientific” and was called into question (and answered smartly by her). Her background as a working-class, bisexual, former nude model with photographs appearing in Playboy did not sit well with the offended and offensive men who interviewed her on top TV shows after the book became a runaway success. All of her many identities are displayed in the movie.
Digging into exclusive archives, as well as Hite’s personal journals and the original survey responses, filmmaker Nicole Newnham transports viewers back to the 70s, a time of great societal transformation around sexuality (See Fairyland, about queer life in San Francisco, also playing here in Sundance,for another take on the 70s and Food and Country about the coming of age of California cuisine in the 70s under the guiding hands of Ruth Reichl and Alice Waters of Chez Panisse). Newnham’s revelatory portrait brings us to reconsider a pioneer who broke the ground for our current conversations about gender, sexuality, and autonomy. Her story also is a timely, cautionary tale of what too often happens to women who dare speak out.
Nicole Newnham is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary director and producer and four-time Sundance alum. She co-directed Crip Camp (2020) with Jim LeBrecht. Crip Camp was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Sundance U.S. Documentary Audience Award. Newnham’s other documentary directing credits include the Emmy-nominated films The Revolutionary Optimists, Sentenced Home, and The Rape of Europa.
U.S. Sales and Distribution: Josh Braun, Submarine Entertainment
There is no international sales agent. Maggie Pisacane at WME is the producers rep along with Josh Braun.
Directed and Produced By: Nicole Newnham (Crip Camp)
Produced By: Molly O’Brien, R.J. Cutler, Elise Pearlstein, Kimberley Ferdinando, Trevor Smith
Co-Produced By: Erica Fink, Eleanor West
Executive Produced By: Elizabeth Fischer, Liz Cole, Noah Oppenheim, Andy Berg, Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman
116 minutes
Film FestivalsWomenDocumentaryGenderSundance...
- 2/11/2023
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
For their documentary “Food and Country,” director Laura Gabbert and renowned food writer Ruth Reichl gathered a thoughtful and strikingly personable cast of characters from across the U.S. to tell their stories in the shadow of the pandemic. Some are chefs, bakers, restaurateurs. Others are independent farmers, ranchers, even a kelp harvester. Some work in big cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and New York. Others make their increasingly fragile living working fields or rearing herds in Kansas, Nebraska, Georgia and Ohio. Their collective insights tell us a great deal about our food system and serve as a warning. Yet their devotion to the work — and often their employees — is heartening, even humbling.
Before joining forces, the director and her chief protagonist had each embarked on separate projects about the duress those in the independent food industry were experiencing because of the 2020 pandemic lockdown. Gabbert, whose 2015 film “City of Gold...
Before joining forces, the director and her chief protagonist had each embarked on separate projects about the duress those in the independent food industry were experiencing because of the 2020 pandemic lockdown. Gabbert, whose 2015 film “City of Gold...
- 2/8/2023
- by Lisa Kennedy
- Variety Film + TV
A second wave of film and television programming has been announced for this year’s South by Southwest Conference and Festivals, with highlights including the series debuts of “Swarm” and Steven Yeun starring “Beef” on opening and closing night, respectively.
A full list of honorees in the visions, global presented by Mubi, 24 beats and festival favorites categories was also unveiled in tandem with additions to previously announced sections.
“The second wave of our lineup signals that the countdown to SXSW is on! The hype train is officially leaving the station, baby!” said Claudette Godfrey, V.P. of film and TV at SXSW. “From thought-provoking documentaries and thrilling television series, to hotly anticipated studio tentpoles and micro-budget dramas, we strive to showcase the best of a diverse range of work, and couldn’t be more proud of this year’s lineup.”
From co-creators Donald Glover and Janine Nabers comes the March 10 world premiere of “Swarm,...
A full list of honorees in the visions, global presented by Mubi, 24 beats and festival favorites categories was also unveiled in tandem with additions to previously announced sections.
“The second wave of our lineup signals that the countdown to SXSW is on! The hype train is officially leaving the station, baby!” said Claudette Godfrey, V.P. of film and TV at SXSW. “From thought-provoking documentaries and thrilling television series, to hotly anticipated studio tentpoles and micro-budget dramas, we strive to showcase the best of a diverse range of work, and couldn’t be more proud of this year’s lineup.”
From co-creators Donald Glover and Janine Nabers comes the March 10 world premiere of “Swarm,...
- 2/1/2023
- by Katie Reul
- Variety Film + TV
Festival runs in Austin, Texas, from March 10-19.
Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby follow-up Bottoms and Jon S. Baird’s Tetris starring Taron Egerton are among the second wave of SXSW unveiled on Wednesday.
Festival organisers announced all selections in Visions, Global presented by Mubi, 24 Beats, and Festival Favorites as well as additions to Headliners, TV Premieres, Narrative and Documentary Spotlight.
New to Headliners are world premieres of Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby follow-up Bottoms which follows two unpopular queer high school students who start a fight club to have sex before graduation; and Jon S. Baird’s Tetris starring...
Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby follow-up Bottoms and Jon S. Baird’s Tetris starring Taron Egerton are among the second wave of SXSW unveiled on Wednesday.
Festival organisers announced all selections in Visions, Global presented by Mubi, 24 Beats, and Festival Favorites as well as additions to Headliners, TV Premieres, Narrative and Documentary Spotlight.
New to Headliners are world premieres of Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby follow-up Bottoms which follows two unpopular queer high school students who start a fight club to have sex before graduation; and Jon S. Baird’s Tetris starring...
- 2/1/2023
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
Leveraging a modest start as a restaurant reviewer for New West magazine in the 1970s, renowned food writer and chef Ruth Reichl rose to the pinnacle of professional achievement as the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. She then moved on to become Gourmet magazine’s editor-in-chief for a decade, prior to the venerable publication’s unfortunate demise. Along the way there have been high-profile stints in broadcasting and no fewer than six James Beard Foundation awards.
So when the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic shuts down thousands of restaurants nationwide, what’s a food reporter to write about? Fortunately, Reichl’s interests have always been much broader than just fine dining, touching also on history, sustainability and social justice. Laura Gabbert, director of 2015 culinary adventure City of Gold and eco-doc No Impact Man (2009), catches up with Reichl in early 2020 as they begin a collaboration...
So when the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic shuts down thousands of restaurants nationwide, what’s a food reporter to write about? Fortunately, Reichl’s interests have always been much broader than just fine dining, touching also on history, sustainability and social justice. Laura Gabbert, director of 2015 culinary adventure City of Gold and eco-doc No Impact Man (2009), catches up with Reichl in early 2020 as they begin a collaboration...
- 1/24/2023
- by Justin Lowe
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Ruth Reichl has so much to tell us about food. She’s been a chef, a restaurant owner, and a critic. She’s edited Gourmet magazine, written bestselling memoirs and cookbooks, and hosted a show on gastronomy. And now, she wants to teach us about the failings of the American food system itself.
“Food and Country” begins in March 2020; Reichl’s impetus is the pandemic onset that ruthlessly exposes the shaky foundations beneath most restaurants. Serving as producer behind the scenes and on-camera interviewer, Reichl Zooms with chefs, restaurateurs, farmers and ranchers across the country, beginning with her longtime friend and farm-to-table pioneer Alice Waters.
But her ambitions are far greater, which is both the movie’s boldest asset and eventual undoing. Director Laura Gabbert (“City of Gold”) tries to cover all of Reichl’s interests, which leaves her with (at least) five movies’ worth of material. We touch on,...
“Food and Country” begins in March 2020; Reichl’s impetus is the pandemic onset that ruthlessly exposes the shaky foundations beneath most restaurants. Serving as producer behind the scenes and on-camera interviewer, Reichl Zooms with chefs, restaurateurs, farmers and ranchers across the country, beginning with her longtime friend and farm-to-table pioneer Alice Waters.
But her ambitions are far greater, which is both the movie’s boldest asset and eventual undoing. Director Laura Gabbert (“City of Gold”) tries to cover all of Reichl’s interests, which leaves her with (at least) five movies’ worth of material. We touch on,...
- 1/24/2023
- by Elizabeth Weitzman
- The Wrap
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