Food on Film – Week 1
Food has become the most appealing thing in modern society, even for me. I enjoy exploring all kinds of food, their tastes, visions and the cultural history behind them. Take one of my favorite film “Eat Drink man woman” directed by Ang Lee as an example. In this movie, food becomes the overture, there is nothing about how to cook or the detail of cooking(still have some footages about it), but food brings people(characters) together, food remains our life itself and let us know the deeper meaning behind it. For instance, the relationship between a family, young adults against traditional rules. I chose this studio because I saw it as a great opportunity for me to understand not only food but to explore representations of food and its relationships to the world. Throughout this studio, I will use documentary to experimenting food’s culture, politics, and economics, it will be a big challenge for me, but I am excited to learn and study how to make a good, short documentary of food. And hopefully, the goal will achieve by the end of the semester.
After food become a commodity rather than human beings, it mixed with economic interests and other factors. The cultural issues of waste food and social problems are thrown aside. My home country China has a large population and a wide variety of food, we had the tradition of not wasting food. I am particularly interested in how do Chinese people who are studying and living in Australia think about Australian food culture in everyday life, and I definitely want to make a documentary about there memories of Chinese food. As Marita Sturken mention the camera imagine not only produces memories but also produce a kind of forgetting. (Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice(2018) P4)
All in all, I am prepared to make a documentary about critical thinking of food, the representation of its values, cultures, and economics. I am going to exploring and understanding the term documentary and what is a food documentary through this semester, also I will learn the skills of making a documentary film.
What is a Documentary film
-exploring the world of non-fiction film
Question: In the reading of Reimaging Documentary it said “There is a misconception by many that to make a documentary, one must travel abroad and turn a camera onto a culture or situation not one’s own…but representing an unfamiliar or foreign realm comes with logistical and representational challenges tied to ethnography, ethics, and power that are overlooked far too often.” Different culture values will influence people, but if I am going to take Chinese student as my interviewee, I don’t believe there is a misconception for me making a documentary about how international people consider Chinese food in Melbourne. Or is there has some misconception?
References
Fox, B 2017, Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice, 2nd education, Routledge, Milton.
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