farming

Mutum

mandy — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Mutum is a coming of age, low-budget feature about a subsistence farming family living in the sertão, the hardscrabble outback of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The family is so dirt poor and isolated that nearly every meal is rice and a little meat, the roof leaks buckets in a rainstorm, and a person can die from lack of treatment for a minor scrape that becomes infected.

The protagonist, Thiago (Thiago da Silva Mariz), nine years old, is guileless, curly-haired, doe-eyed, a moralist, a storyteller, a profound questioner, and a favourite of his long-suffering mother (Izadora Fernandes). His innocence is broken by death, violence, and sexual betrayal, mostly played low-key or off-screen, except for a small amount of overt physical violence.

The household’s father, Bero (João Miguel), can joke with his kids, but has a hair-trigger temper, is subject to rages, and abuses his family—especially Thiago because his son is broodingly sensitive. His personable uncle (Rômulo Braga) treats Thiago well, but exploits the relationship to manipulate the boy. His older brother, Felipe (Felipe Leal Barroso), with whom he is close, suffers a disturbing fate.

Sandra Kogut, Mutum's director, takes chances that pay off. The temporal and thematic connections between scenes are not always immediately obvious. This method requires a viewer to actively engage with the scenes to connect their meanings—a good thing. Kogut’s actors are mostly non-professionals. All of them—kids and adults alike—do amazingly well in range and expression. One feels their authentic presence, undoubtedly because they are native to the locality. This casting creates the feel of eavesdropping on real lives, as well as foregrounding by comparison the artifice of so much Hollywood acting.

Contrary to the hyperkinetic editing fashionable in many studio films, Kogut establishes an unhurried rhythm using long takes that employ close-ups and extreme close-ups, often of people’s faces, which contrast sharply with telephoto landscape shots. This method and its results mirror the slow pace of the countryside and also allow the characters to bond emotionally in a convincing way, which big feature films often fail to do because those movies almost always restlessly move on to the next edit.

Example: Thiago and his mother must make a decision that will alter their lives forever. He comes to her, climbs in her lap, rests his head on her shoulder. Dialogue is minimal. Everything they feel lives in their faces and their hug. One keeps expecting an edit, but the camera is not impatient; it holds for about a minute—an eternity for most shots in movies nowadays—so they and we can feel the love between them. It’s a beautiful, simple, complex minute.

Finally, in this incomplete list of Kogut’s achievements with this film, Mutum eschews a music track. This tactic lets an audience experience on its own the emotions arising from those long, intimate takes rather than being coerced into those emotions by hammer-and-anvil leitmotifs. Sounds from the environment—the barking of dogs, a cow lowing, birds calling, insects chirruping—contribute to a scene’s tone, while simultaneously helping to create the sense of place.

I do have a major beef with Mutum. In the last few minutes of the film, with nary a scintilla of backstory, seeding, or foreshadowing to set this up, there occurs an extremely important revelation about Thiago. This sudden revelation is all the more jarring because it seems incompatible with what we have seen of him; thus the suspension of disbelief necessary to drama—indeed upon which emotional involvement in drama absolutely depends—is shattered. This flaw is not a dealbreaker, as there are so many pleasures and treasures in Mutum, but it sure is a clunky misstep in an otherwise excellent picture.

Written by: Neil Flowers, March 10th 2011

Growing Roots: The New Generation of Sustainable Farmers, Cooks, and Food Activists

barbara — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Katherine Leiner

Sunrise Lane Productions

Seared Scallop Salad with Honey Vinaigrette and Moqui (Spicy) Mac (n’Cheese), yum. This was simply the one of the selections of delicious recipes in Growing Roots that I attempted with the assistance of my boyfriend/sous-chef. But Growing Roots is much more than a cookbook. Chronicling one woman’s cross-country road trip and profiling folks on the ground at every level, from composting queens to herbalists to family farmers to social entrepreneurs-restaurateurs, Growing Roots is a unique window into the breadth of labor and love that is going into the ever-growing movement of food sustainability.

Each interview flows into the next by region, not issue area, but it works because you get the sense you are tagging along on this road trip with Leiner and her dog, Luna. Leiner gives a little exposition on how she met the people she interviews and where she spoke with them along the way in her travels; interestingly though, she predominantly uses their own words. Interviews focus on the daily lives and progress of their work on sustainability. Most of the profiles are complemented by each individual’s favorite recipes; most include ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, and all of them look incredible. The two I made on Sunday, mentioned above, were scrumptious and strangely complemented one another, even though they came from different folks.

From the scope of the interviews, Katherine Leiner appears to have a real insider’s connections throughout the industry. She notes lots of personal relationships, and though she tries to sound down-to-earth her Manhattan foodie fabulousness bubbles up again and again. It appears that she sees the book as a platform to highlight the little people of the sustainability world. Perhaps she sees it as doing her part, or perhaps she has compiled this as a pet project simply because she can.

Ironically, everyone highlighted in the book describes sacrifices they’ve made in order to do this work. Day jobs that they love and feel are so important leave them with limited means or other losses. Juxtaposed with Leiner, it seems at times she is almost using them. But to be fair, I come from very much the same school of privileged environmentalism that Leiner does, and the opportunity to credit these hard work activists is incredible—very few people could pull it off.

More than anything, the consistent pattern of each interview would seem to get old quite fast, but it doesn’t at all. Each person’s story is compelling and inspiring and makes you want to read more and more. It even began to create grand delusions in my own city girl mind about the beauties of farming and that even I could be capable of it. Now, that’s a hell of a book.

Written by: Nicole Levitz, November 25th 2010

The Cheese Chronicles: A Journey through the Making and Selling of Cheese in America, from Field to Farm to Table

admin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:18:00 +0000

By Liz Thorpe

Ecco

Upon receiving Liz Thorpe’s The Cheese Chronicles, I had to ask myself: Do you really love cheese enough to get through 366 pages of it? The answer, apparently, is yes.

Now, I detest the term foodie. My boyfriend teasingly calls me a foodie in his WASP-iest voice. It seems so pretentious, so elitist, so... stupid. I can’t deny, though, my great love and interest in all things food. I love to cook. I read recipe books like novels while curled up in bed. I could watch the Food Network all day. I can happily spend two hours in a grocery store. I look at food porn. I love to eat. I love to feed people. You get the picture.

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that cheese is my favorite type of food. It is featured in every dish I love to eat and cook, and Thorpe’s loving opus to all things cheese only whet my appetite for this surprisingly scientific food.

Out of the blue, Thorpe decided she wanted a career in cheese and began her journey working behind the counter at the now famous Murray's Cheese Shop in New York City. Since then, the Yale graduate has become the managing director of the shop, where she teaches classes, finds interesting new cheeses, and works with chefs interested in featuring beautiful, American-made dairy on their menu. Thorpe is said to have professionalized the craft of cheese making while also highlighting the incredible love and passion of the people who inhabit it. We’re not talking about commercial operations here, though Thorpe is quick to point out that some of those cheeses are decent as well. The book, however, mostly focuses on small dairy farms located throughout the U.S. that are making some exquisite cheeses.

If you’ve ever seen the offerings at your local chain grocery stores, you’ll understand why cheese making isn’t considered one of America’s strong points in terms of culinary prowess. Simply put, good quality cheese isn’t as important to most Americans as it is to people in other countries. We like American on our burgers and stringy mozzarella on our pizzas, but that’s all changing. As the country becomes more interested in where the food they eat comes from, the want and need for "real" cheese is growing, and so is the average American’s willingness to pay a hefty price for artisanal, locally-made cheese.

The process is tedious, requiring just as much knowledge of science as nature. People of all kinds are making cheese all over the country, and much of it is being sold at local farmer’s markets, never to be experienced by those even one town over. There’s something fantastic about that. Cheese is supposed to be seasonal, but thanks to hormones and a few other tricks, dairy farmers can now milk cows, goats, and sheep year-round, but that’s obviously not what nature intended. Many artisanal cheese makers milk their animals when nature intended, which is just after breeding season when the animal has naturally-made milk to give. The cheese offered by these purveyors is in high demand.

I’ve learned an extraordinary amount about the art—yes, art—of cheese making from The Cheese Chronicles. Unfortunately I cannot afford high end cheese on a regular basis, but after reading Thorpe’s book, I fear I can’t ever go back to the cryovaced cheddar of my youth. When eating cheap, poorly made cheddar cheese, you can taste bile at the back of your throat, a surefire indication the cheese you are eating is shit. Now that you know what that stinging, sour sensation is in your mouth, you can never go back.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, August 19th 2009

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

admin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:41:00 +0000

By Lierre Keith

Flashpoint Press

When I initially saw the title of this book, my inner scale wanted to weigh its contents against my fifteen year decision to exclude eating anything that had parents. I also presumed the author was one of those pork slinging individuals who just couldn’t cut it as a vegetarian. The good thing about getting older, though, is the wisdom I have acquired in remaining open. Lierre Keith discusses three reasons—moral, political, and nutritional—why most vegetarians choose to adopt a meatless diet, and the misconceived notions that often accompany those reasons.

What stood out to me is Keith’s discussion of agriculture and its effects on land, society, animals, and the relationship between all three. The land that is used to cultivate all those vegetables that vegetarians feel so ethically euphoric about consuming must be cleaned and cleared of every single piece of lint in order to be successful in producing a single plant. Consequently, the animals and microfauna (bacteria, fungi, and yeasts) that symbiotically thrived off that land are forced into their demise, with the bison serving as an example. Keith states that the sixty to 100 million bison that existed in the U.S. in 1491 have been reduced to 350,000 in number today. Also, only 10,000 wolves now remain where there were once between 425,000 and a million. Once this relationship is forced to call it quits, the land that would normally nourish and replenish itself is now barren until another piece of land is taken over, or until fertilizer is used.

With political vegetarianism, Keith uses the symbiotic relationship of the many companies that are seen as profit-fueled while also holding a financial interest in those meat-free, so-called environmentally-friendly products we so proudly consume. Basically, that soymilk we may drink out of protest against Coca-Cola is owned by the same company that holds shares in that red can.

In the section on nutritional vegetarianism, of which I took particular interest, Keith explains the physiology involved in consuming a low-saturated fat, high carbohydrate, and high grain diet. She also gives a personal account of how this diet affected her own body resulting in fourteen years of sickness, nausea, and bloating. Not only in vegetarianism, but also in the diet many Americans have been scared into adopting, the above-mentioned way of eating is being attributed to cardiovascular disease. Some of the diseases Keith states are attributed to the “diseases of civilization” are arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and stroke.

What I thought would be a book filled with disgruntled accounts of a has-been vegetarian justifying the excuse to pig out on double cheeseburgers again, was actually a well-researched, statistically sound book that deals with truths from both a personal aspect and a social one. Keith, although opinionated in some places, still allows the reader to consider both sides of the vegetarian argument from three perspectives. For those who insist on one way versus another, The Vegetarian Myth presents us with enough information to wisely weigh whatever we choose to put on our plates.

Written by: Olupero R. Aiyenimelo, August 13th 2009