Hungry for RiverRun
In the weeks before the RiverRun International Film Festival each year, we spend a lot of time watching review copies of films that will be shown on the big screen in Winston-Salem come the end of April. All this movie-watching is for a noble cause - our annual RiverRun extravanganza in relish, which includes reviews of most of the movies. This year’s edition will be come out on April 16. In other words, we watch the duds so you won’t have to. To be fair, RiverRun duds are rare.
Tim Clodfelter is the keeper of the RiverRun screeners, and he would probably tell you I get a little greedy about any movies that touch on food. Last year, I enjoyed All in This Tea, Les Blank’s documentary about a tea importer. So far this year, one food-centric film I’ve watched is Pressure Cooker, also a documentary, but as different from All in This Tea as a movie can be.
Pressure Cooker follows three high school seniors through a culinary arts program. The class culimates in a scholarship competition that could be the students big ticket out of inner-city Philadelphia. The real star of the documentary, though, is their teacher - the sharp-tongue, drill saregent Wilma Stephenson. She is a tough cookie. She would take the soft-bellied contestants on Top Chef and turn them into pools of consomme. And like many good stories about food, this documentary is less about learning how to properly flip an omelet and more about larger issues of hope and escape and a future. For some of these students, cooking is a way out of a very hard exsistence. Definitely make time for Pressure Cooker if you’re attending RiverRun. It’s showing April 24 at 1 p.m. and April 25 at noon at Reynolda House.
Food Inc. is another documentary for the curious epicureans to consider. I’ve haven’t seen it yet but it’s gotten some buzz. It’s showing at RiverRun three times, so if you want to see it, you should have a chance.
I’ve also just finished Shall We Kiss? , a French romantic comedy. Not at all about food, but a lot of fun.
