Culinary Cinema Feast at Berlinale

The 65th Berlinale Film Festival is just about to kick off this week and so are the Culinary Cinema events. Since it is a feast for both the body and the mind, film and food seems to make a perfect pairing. This is what Berlinale organisers had in mind when they introduced the section Culinary Cinema back in 2007. In this sense they were pioneers to put food and film together at an international film festival event and for the past eight years have held an annual food event at Berlinale.

The idea is pretty simple, it’s a week’s immersion in films about food, with the attendees dining at the screenings. However, it’s not only about nutrition and our basic need to avoid the hunger, and most importantly it’s not about junk food or packaged snacks that cinema goers tend to eat at the movies.

The films shown are focused on food as ‘a way of life’ and on re-discovering the pleasure of cooking from fresh ingredients. The goal is to promote slow food philosophy, which is against industrial food producers, corporate giant food market. Alice Water is calling for a defence of farmers and producers who work according to organic principles and the director of Berlinale Film Festival, Dieter Kosslick values the importance of healthy, high quality but simple food as much as the diversity in the world of independent film, as he says ‘Culture and agriculture are the two sides of the same coin.’

Screenings take place in decorous style with a fine dinner to finish with and the food is prepared by celebrated chefs, inspired by the films shown. The programme includes fictional films whose stories resolve around food as well as documentaries tackling the problem of the food origin and environmental issues. There are Q&A with directors, producers and actors that follow the Culinary Cinema screenings.