Food and Film: Farming – Harvest

In-person:
Pre-screening Q&A with chef Alice Waters and farmer Alex Weiser (Weiser Family Farms and Tehachapi Grain Project), moderated by Laurie Ochoa (L.A. Times).

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Harvest
Regain, France, 1937

With the name of Chez Panisse inspired by a character from Marcel Pagnol’s César (1938) it’s only fitting that we begin this series with Pagnol’s enchanting paean to agrarian France. After years of migration to the big cities, a remote village nestled on a hilltop is down to its last few inhabitants, including Pantrule (Gabriel Gabrio), a hulking but gentle hermit who longs to revive the town. When he encounters Arsule (Orane Demazis), a woman on the run looking to start over herself, the pair begin tilling the earth to grow wheat and hopefully revive a whole way of life. Pagnol suffuses every shot of their labor and the land with tenderness and care in a film about the beauty and dignity of the simple things.

DCP, b&w, in French with English subtitles, 127 min. Director: Marcel Pagnol. Screenwriter: Jean Giono, Marcel Pagnol. With: Fernandel, Orane Demazis, Gabriel Gabrio.

Part of:
Food and Film: Farming

Dinner and a movie. It’s a combination, a social custom, perhaps, almost as old as the movies themselves. But where the public fascination with how movies get made still drives an entire media industry, we’ve been less willing, by comparison, to learn as much about how a meal comes together, how the food on our plate gets there. Few people have been more instrumental in changing that than Alice Waters. The co-founder with film producer Paul Aratow of the award-winning Chez Panisse in 1971, the legendary Bay Area chef and restaurateur has been a central, passionate advocate of the farm-to-table movement which promotes seasonal, organic and locally sourced ingredients for restaurants, schools and in the home. Waters’ philosophy is predicated on eating being a political act; where and whom you get your food from and the conviction that sustainable farming practices are essential to building sustainable, thriving communities. The UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Hammer Museum are thrilled to partner with Waters for an ongoing series that explores how movies from around the world have represented food and food production. Each program will pair a selection of movies with a special dinner at Lulu restaurant at the Hammer Museum, Waters’ latest culinary celebration. For the inaugural weekend, they’ve curated a program of films centered on community, farms and the people they help sustain.