NaFF log, day 1

The first film that I went to see was Mara LeGrand's little documentary, Heart and Soil. To commemorate Earth Day, the screening was free... and I'm certainly not one to pass up a documentary about food and environmentalism-- particularly if it's free! More or less, it's a little loving tribute to sustainable farming and the farmers'-market community.

From the outset, I could anticipate no reason why I wouldn't like this film-- I'm certainly a member of the pro-local, pro-organic, pro-small-farm choir. But honestly, I thought the film was a little sugared, sanitized, poorly narrated piece of drivel.

One of LeGrand's first mistakes is that she didn't really tell the audience that her all of her footage came from right outside her back door in Durango, Colorado. The film is set up as though it's a paean to subsistence farming everywhere, and yet, it really only reflects the mentality and culture of farming in Durango. What I really mean to say here is that, with the exception of one Native American woman, every damn farmer in the thing is white. Having attended more than one Southern Foodways Symposiums, and having lived most of my life in the South, it's really difficult for me to understand a film of this subject matter in which the contributions of African American small-scale farmers are ignored. Now, she could easily counter my point here by saying that her film was about the Durango community-- which IS mostly white-- but she didn't ever say that. I learned that tiny detail in her Q&A after the screening. As a result, the film gives the impression that only apple-cheeked flannel-wearers of European descent have any real investment in this project. And that's rather unfortunate, as the American buffet includes so many dishes of indigenous and African extraction. And I really think she could have solved this problem simply by TELLING us that she was limiting her scope to one little community. But as it stands, the film reads as though it's a representation of all American small-scale farming... and an inaccurate one at that.

Beyond that, there's a funny little undercurrent of assumptive attitude that pervades the film. It's quietly and subtly arguing, through sweeping sanitization and romanticization, that we'd all be better off if we just dropped out of the world, bought plots of land, and supported ourselves through farming. Now, I personally like living in a major metropolitan area. I've lived on a farm and it was okay when I was a kid, but I'm a city girl. As an adult, I like the access to everything under the sun and I like the fact that I can support myself without mucking around in sheep shit. I am decidedly committed to supporting local and organic farming with my hard-earned dollars, but I don't want to earn them through actual participation in the industry. The film pays very little attention to the consumer end of this equation and that omission seems to suggest that we city folk are somehow going about our conscientious consumerism all wrong. That annoys me. And makes me feel left out, especially as I do consider myself a participant.

And I gotta say: this LeGrand woman is one piss-poor film editor. There is one sequence in which we see a turkey farmer preparing to off one of her birds. They load the bird into this bucket-like apparatus with a hole in the bottom. The turkey's head goes through the hole-- and I don't know for sure how this works, but I assume that either they break the turkey's neck or they decapitate it and let the blood drain out. But she froze the shot right before they killed it! This, to me, is a travesty. She spoke in her Q&A about how she wanted the tone of the film to be "poetic" and "optimistic" but it seems to me that, if you're going to discuss the moral superiority of closing the human cognitive disconnect with the food chain, you've got an obligation to show the blood and guts of it all. I was absolutely offended that I was prevented from seeing that part of the process, as though somehow seeing the reality of animal slaughter is going to dissuade me from eating conscientiously raised animal products?

I had a discussion with Jon in the car ride after about whether or not, when it came right down to it, if we could kill our own animals to eat. From an ethical standpoint, I actually have far fewer qualms with killing my own animals than I do with eating neat geometric cuts of cellophaned meat from the grocery store. I mean, I've been around animal slaughters and it neither disgusts or horrifies me. If I know that an animal is raised with care and that it dies humanely, I have no problem with eating it and/or paying money for it. If I know neither or those things, I'm forced to assume that the chances the animal was raised ethically are slim and the chances that it died comfortably are even slimmer. Therefore, I think those who butcher their own meat really can assume a higher moral ground than those who don't.

But my point here is that, if you're going to tell this story, you've got an obligation to tell the whole story. You can't be scared of the sqeamishness of those of us who've only ever bought food in the antiseptic, fluorescent environment of the neighborhood grocery store. We citified grocery shoppers NEED to know and see the reality of the process in order to fully grasp our karmic role in food consumption and our proximity to the food chain. It's of capital importance, as far as I'm concerned. And LeGrand fell wholly short on that front.

I suppose one could argue that this film is suitable for, I dunno, school screenings and other venues through which one might proselytize to new audiences about gaining consciousness about the food we eat. But for an audience that might be even slightly educated about this topic, the film does little more than skim the surface and paint a smiley face on it.

Meanwhile, of course, I'm only ankle-deep in The Omnivore's Dilemma already and have already gleaned more smart nuggets from its introduction than I got from that whole film. Please allow me to go ahead and tack this book onto my should-be-required-reading list.

***

And then, the second film I saw last night was Teenage Tupelo. I am very sorry to say that, due to some aforementioned rumblings in the night before, I was scarcely conscious throughout most of this film. This is particularly embarrassing, as I flat-out fell asleep on Jon's shoulder with the director sitting RIGHT NEXT TO ME. A faux pas, to be sure.

However, from what I saw of it-- and from what Jon had to explain to me afterwards-- it is quirky, tonal and strange with healthy helpings of tits and some creative narrative leaps. It even has a clip of vintage stock of a baby exiting a womb! Clearly, the inclusion of a clip like that would endear any film to me in a heartbeat. You know, I wonder... if John Waters and David Lynch ever teamed up and decided to investigate The American South as subject matter, I have a hunch that that movie might look a like this one.

Dammit all-- me and my flaky sleep cycle! Well, at least I can see the first 5 chapters again.