Cooking History Peter Kerekes, Slovakia / Czech Republic / Austria / Finland, 2009, 88 minutes
Saturday, May 8 | 4:00pm | Pacific Cinémathèque
What keeps the armies of the world going? Tanks, submarines, airplanes, bullets, bombs? Actually, bread. Bread and blinis and sausage and coq au vin, even “monkey meat” rations. Without food, the army would be in a shambles. Taking a tour of 20th century battlefields, Peter Kerekes revisits mess halls and field kitchens, asking cooks to recreate meals they served at the front. One Russian woman prepares blinis she once made for the soldiers fighting off the Germans outside Leningrad. Hungarians slaughter a pig for kolbasz. A German sings a fight song while baking black bread for the soldiers who just took Poland. A French conscientious objector chases a cockerel for his dinner. Reliving the battles while they prepare the food, the cooks are proud of their roles in serving their countries yet remain haunted by the suffering. Using humour, poignancy and reserve, Kerekes elevates the much-maligned documentary technique of re-enactment while subtly making his point that if the armies of the world were indeed in a shambles, there might not be any wars.
Nominee, Best Documentary, 2009 European Academy Awards
Vienna Film Prize for Best Documentary, 2009 Viennale, Austria
Special Jury Prize, 2009 Hot Docs, Toronto
“Proving the maxim ‘An army marches on its belly,’ playful docu Cooking History inventively uses the field kitchen as a prism through which to view 20th-century European history.”
- Alissa Simon, Variety
Director’s biography
Peter Kerekes graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava in 1998 and then co-founded the Department of Feature and Documentary Film. His first feature documentary was 66 Seasons, which premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2003. In 2004, Kerekes collaborated with filmmakers Pavel Lozinsky (Poland), Jan Gogola (Czech Republic), Robert Lakatos (Hungary), and Blijana Cekic-Veselic (Slovenia) on Across the Border, bringing together a series of meditations on the idea of the border. Kerekes’ documentary Cooking History was presented in competition at Nyon’s Visions du Réel.
Presented by the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival and curated by Ariella Ben-Dov
The Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival is the longest-running showcase for documentaries in the US. The Festival screens films that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of the peoples and cultures that populate our planet. Encompassing a broad spectrum of work, the Mead presents the best in documentary, experimental, animation, and hybrid works.
Ariella J. Ben-Dov is a curator specializing in thematic series of independent cinema featuring a wide spectrum of genres — avant-garde, animation, documentary, and essay films. Ben-Dov is the Artistic and Festival Director of the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival at the American Museum of Natural History. Ben-Dov is also co-founder and curator of the MadCat Women’s International Film Festival. MadCat promotes cutting-edge films and videos of all genres by women directors from around the globe. Ben-Dov co-curated the 51st Robert Flaherty Seminar, a week-long documentary event. Entitled Creative Demolition: Reconstructing Culture Through Innovations in Film and Video, the seminar featured a variety of art experiences such as 3D screenings, international documentaries, interactive media installations and Viewmaster performances.
