i went to the Ethnography Through Film festival at McGill a couple years ago with Leah and Gianna on the 'food production' night. i've talked a lot about the films we watched that night since then and i just just just found the one i thought was especially interesting, online.
Our Daily Bread looks at food production in Europe using a soundtrack of massive machines that interrupt the food we eat on its way from seed/birth to our stomach and shots that mirror the best from films you'll probably recognize (i.e. the shot of the sunflower fields and that one above). the combination of which manages to humanize everything in the film except for the humans.
it's a really, really good film.
after we watched it, we got a warning from the moderator (or whatever we should call her...she was associated with the film history dept. at Concordia, I believe) about how gruesome the next film was. Le Sang des Betes is a doc about a slaughterhouse in France in 1949. fully scored and with jaunty narration, there's lots and lots of blood.
honestly though, all the sterile shots of modern day slaughterhouses you see in Our Daily Bread are much more disturbing.
