By Julie Lindow
It is rare that watching a film can provoke a similar response as reading an author’s work, but The Art of Eating: The Life of M.F.K. Fisher does just that. One feels both starved and satisfied. Fortunately, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher’s words on screen and paper not only awaken our hunger, but teach us how to listen to our own desires, how to slow down and pay attention, be curious, sensual, in the moment, and ultimately, how to more intensely live and love. Continue reading
By Vince Keenan
(May 22, 2024)
(Editor’s note: As people increase their frequency of going out to entertainment, most events that went virtual during Covid have returned to in-person presentations, including film festivals. The Seattle International Film Festival has programmed a number of their in-person selections for streaming through May 27 so that people not in the Seattle area can discover them. Film lover and mixologist Vince Keenan writes about four Eat & Drink Films he saw at the festival.)
The Seattle International Film Festival has always offered a robust selection of movies about food and drink, “Culinary Cinema” being one of its staple programs. It continues the tradition in its fiftieth anniversary season. Several of the relevant titles are programmed in categories related to location—the Pacific Northwest and the Iberian Peninsula—which is only fitting, as the films all touch on and expand the concept of terroir. Continue reading
By Geneva Anderson
(March 16, 2024)
Haley Bennett rises to become the Grand Dame of Champagne in Thomas Napper’s “Widow Clicquot”
The Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF27) is just around the corner, March 20-24. Set in the heart of the wine country, with a program that emphasizes film, food, wine, parties, and community engagement, SIFF has twice been voted one of the 25 coolest festivals in the world by MovieMaker magazine. SIFF27 showcases 43 narrative and 16 documentary features plus 48 shorts from over 25 countries. Continue reading
By Gaetano Kazuo Maida
“It’s never finished. It’s always in movement.”—Michel Troisgros 
Okay, so let’s say you’re like me and you don’t customarily (like, never!) spend $1000 for lunch for two, and it happens that you don’t live in France, and yet you have good taste in food, you know what it is to enjoy a fine wine occasionally, you’re curious about the synergies between sustainable agriculture and restaurants, and at the moment are feeling a bit peckish. Well, the universe is generous, and Menu Plaisirs Les Troisgros offers a reasonable facsimile of enjoying one of the world’s top haute cuisine institutions from the comfort of your own seat or couch for four hours, about the duration of a really nice long lunch, albeit without the tasting bit. Continue reading
By Risa Nye
July 15, 2022
The first thing to know about Living Wine is that it was filmed in 2020. The reason the year is worth noting—as one would note a particular vintage on a wine label— is that this was the year of the Lightning Complex fires: one of the costliest disasters of the year, and the sixth most destructive wildfire in California’s history.
Before viewers know this, however, producer and director of this documentary, Lori Miller, introduces us to a number of nontraditional winemakers who produce natural wines in Northern California. We accompany these winemakers through their beautifully tended vineyards: Gideon Beinstock and Saron Rice (Clos Saron), Darek Trowbridge (Old World Winery), Megan Bell (Margins Wine), James Jelks (Florèz Wines), and Dani Rozman (La Onda). Continue reading
By Fred Swan
July 15, 2022
Many wines are simple. The world of wine is not. A seemingly endless list of factors creates the individual character of any wine. From microbes to mesoclimate, from variety to vintage.
If you scratch the surface of most any wine topic, you’ll find greater depth, and more connections with other topics, than you’d imagine. Living Wine, a new film being released Friday, July 15, does more than just scratch the surface of “natural wine.” Nearly every one of its 85 minutes raises an idea or question that would be fascinating to explore in depth.
By Geneva Anderson
Jetting out of Halifax is rarely simple for Devour! The Film Food Fest co-founders, Lia Rinaldo and Chef Michael Howell. As they headed for the 25th edition of the Sonoma International Film Festival, they were schlepping 400 Sober Island Oysters and several bottles of Domaine de Grand Pré’s prized sparkling Champlain Brut. The special cargo was for Chef Howell as he organized his own appetizer while juggling the details of numerous other participants in the eagerly-awaited SIFF | Devour! “Chefs & Shorts Culinary” Event Honoring Chef Jacques Pépin.
Michael Howell and Lia Renaldo. Photo courtesy Devour!
The Sonoma International Film Festival once again collaborated with Devour! to present a “Chefs & Shorts” Culinary Event Honoring Chef Jacques Pépin.
EatDrinkFilms is proud to offer you a chance to watch some of the short films that were paired with these chefs dishes.
By C.J. Hirschfield
I’ve got to believe that many people are turning to cannabis, wine, and the support of loving family members to get through our current pandemic. And to the extent that each of these supports have been grown organically, all the better.
by Jonathan Kiefer
The origin of AROUND THE SUN is this. My friend Oliver Krimpas and I had been trying to make a movie together for years. The plan was for me to write a script that he’d direct. After a false start with one project that couldn’t achieve liftoff, austere frugality seemed like the only way forward. I tried to think up some idea involving very few characters in mostly one locale. It was like the Mystery Box challenge: to take a few choice luck-of-the-draw ingredients, and a finite amount of time, and prepare a dish that Gordon Ramsay won’t spit out and yell at you for.
by Michaela Kane Rodeno
Michaela Rodeno shares reflections from her pioneering career at the forefront of the wine industry in Napa Valley.
Tracing the arc of her career development from its unlikely beginnings in early 1970s Napa, when the wine industry was in its infancy, to being part of the two-person team that launched Domaine Chandon in the U.S., to her role as St. Supéry Winery’s first CEO, Rodeno has extensive wit and wisdom to share. Continue reading
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