Meet the Makers - SBIFF

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MEET THE MAKERS INTERVIEWS WITH SBIFF FILMMAKERS ISSUE #3 • JANUARY 30, 2014

SCREEN CUISINE 2014 LODGING DEALS AND PRIX FIXE MENUS FROM MORE THAN 50 SANTA BARBARA BUSINESSES! Film Feast, Santa Barbara’s unique take on Restaurant Week, will again be luring diners’ taste buds to one of the 36 restaurants and tasting rooms offering up innovative menus using the theme “Made in Santa Barbara.” With so many great options to choose from, festivalgoers can extend their stay on The American Riviera ® by booking one of the 16 Film Feast–inspired hotel packages. For more information, go to www.SBFilmFeast.com.

2014 FILM FEAST PARTICIPANTS Alchemy Center Spa Wellness Café • Andersen’s Danish Bakery and Restaurant • Arlington Tavern Au Bon Climat • Bacara Resort & Spa • Best Western PLUS Encina Lodge & Suites Best Western PLUS Pepper Tree Inn • Bistro 1111 at Hyatt Santa Barbara • Blue Agave Blush Restaurant and Lounge • Brasil Arts Café • Brisas del Mar, Inn at the Beach • Ca’Dario Conway Family Wines - Deep Sea Tasting Room • Crocodile Café at the Lemon Tree • Cutler’s • Downey’s The Eagle Inn • El Encanto • Enterprise Fish Co. • The Fess Parker: A DoubleTree Resort by Hilton Finch & Fork • Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara • Grassini Family Vineyards Hotel Indigo Santa Barbara • Hotel Santa Barbara • Inn by the Harbor • Julienne • Kotuku Elixir Bar La Arcada Bistro • The Lark • Lavender Inn by the Sea • Lemon Tree Inn Les Marchands Wine Bar & Merchant • Margerum Wine Company • Municipal Winemakers Nardonne’s La Famiglia Pizzeria • Olio e Limone Ristorante • Opal Restaurant & Bar The Palace Grill • Paradise Café • Pascucci • Ramada Limited Santa Barbara Sandbar Mexican Restaurant & Tequila Bar • Santa Barbara Winery • Savoy Café & Deli Scarlett Begonia • Secret Garden Inn and Cottages • State & Fig • Seven Bar & Kitchen Ty Lounge at Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara • The Upham Hotel & Country House

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A YEAR IN CHAMPAGNE David Kennard

C

oming in the wake of last year’s oenophilefave flick A Year in Burgundy, this one focuses on the world’s home of sparkling wine, painting a fun and effervescent portrait of the people, places, and processes behind bubbly.

AS YOU SHOW, CHAMPAGNE IS DOMINATED

BY BIG PRODUCERS. ARE THE SMALLER PRODUCERS MAKING A COMEBACK? There has been an artisanal revolution in Champagne in the last 10-plus years. Many families have stopped selling their grapes to the big producers and have set up on their own. Not all their product is good, but the effect on the big guys has been to make them buy up more and more small producers, just to get their vines. The four small artisanal family wineries we feature have been established more than 50 years and produce the very top-quality wine. They have time to really concentrate on their vineyards, which makes the process more intimate and the result often more remarkable.

DID YOU RUN INTO ANY BACKLASH FROM THE BIG CHAMPAGNE MAKERS IN PRODUCING THIS FILM? I don’t think the big guys even knew we were filming during the many visits we were there.

We simply didn’t want to be involved with their industrial methods of production and their huge PR machines. Bollinger is an important player in Champagne (hugely prestigious) and so is Gosset, but they’re medium sized and have kept the personal touch.

DID YOU PRODUCE THIS AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU DID A YEAR IN BURGUNDY? No. We filmed Burgundy in 2011 and edited it in 2012. We filmed Champagne in 2012 and edited it in 2013.

THE PACING AND STRUCTURE REMINDS ME OF A NEW YORKER STORY, TOLD ELOQUENTLY BUT IN A LEISURELY WAY. HOW DID YOU DECIDE ON THAT STYLE OF PRESENTATION? Thank you. I treat that as a compliment. I decided to tell the story of wine the same way that good wine is made: You take your time, you try to get subtlety into the blend, you give the viewer time to get to know the people involved — even their dogs! Bouchon the terrier is one of the stars of the movie; sun or rain, he’s out in the fields with his master.

THIS FILM FEELS MORE “FUN” THAN THE BURGUNDY FILM, WHICH WAS GREAT BUT ALSO VERY TECHNICAL. WHY IS THAT? That’s an interesting observation. We were all concerned that (because of the weather, at least) it would seem more gloomy. But I think we have

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a much wider range of emotions here, from the grim trenches of World War I to the out-and-out fun of parties and balloon rides: more laughs, perhaps.

I think you’ll find there’s technical information woven in here: Explaining how Champagne is made is much harder than explaining how Burgundy is made. But perhaps we’ve integrated it better and used the music better, so you hardly realize you’re getting educated as well as entertained! We want these films to have a 20-plus-year shelf life, so that’s important to us.

I NOTICED THAT THE GLASSWARE USED IN FRANCE IS NOT THE AMERICAN FLUTED VARIETY. WHY DO WE INSIST ON FLUTES? Flutes, of course, concentrate the bubbles and direct them straight up the nose, to get that initial tingle before you even taste the stuff ! The French do use flutes, but the people who make champagne are more down-to-earth and are quite happy to use any old wineglass that is available!

wine; they can be downright grouchy, indeed!

But once you get to know them (which is the great advantage of filming a documentary over a whole year), you become one of the family and discover their warmth and love of fun.

DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE WINE DOCS IN THE WORKS? One more: A Year in Port, filmed in 2013 in Portugal’s Douro Valley and the ancient city of Porto. This film, which we’ll start to edit after SBIFF, will perhaps be the most fun and the most extraordinary film of the trilogy, but we’ll have to see what the critics think.

—Matt Kettmann SAT 2/1–7:20PM & TUE 2/4–10:20PM, METRO 4 SUN 2/2–11AM , LOBERO

The history of wineglass shapes is also largely tied up with fashion, as it has changed over the years.

Who knows what will be in vogue in the future?

THOUGH IT OFTEN SEEMS LIKE A VERY ELITE REGION, THE PEOPLE OF CHAMPAGNE SEEMED VERY APPROACHABLE AND DOWNTO-EARTH. IS THAT WHAT YOU FOUND? Champagne really isn’t an elite region, though the PR departments of the biggest companies might like you to think so. The people are very down-to-earth: The weather is often dreadful, they’ve been invaded many times, other people have stolen their inventions and imitated their

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DOG DAYS

Laura Waters Hinson

P

art food movie, part human interest story, part political doc, Dog Days focuses on Coite, a recently laid-off average white guy who sets out to overhaul the problematic street vending monopoly in his home of Washington, D.C. Along the way, Coite meets Siyone, a single mom and former refugee from Eritrea, who has been selling hot dogs curbside in our nation’s capital for upwards of 20 years. Together, the pair form a bond over business, personal struggles, and an admirable desire to defend the greater good.

HOW DID YOU GUYS FIRST COME TO MEET COITE? Coite was a personal friend who, honestly, had never crossed my mind as a main character for a documentary. However, one night he came over for dinner and somewhat sheepishly confessed that he’d gotten fired from his job and wasn’t sure what to do next. This was in the midst of the economic collapse of 2009, when millions of people were losing their jobs. Coite’s first impulse, though, wasn’t to clamor for the first job he could find. He began explaining his dream of starting a small business that would help traditional, largely immigrant, hot dog vendors on the streets of D.C. to make their own failing businesses more competitive against the rising popularity of food trucks.

was a real story in this microcosm of American entrepreneurship playing out under the noses of so many D.C. politicians preaching job creation and economic revival. It had all the elements of a good film: high stakes, true “underdog” characters, and an untold story. We spent the next four years, off and on, filming our characters to see how their dreams would turn out.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE PEOPLE TAKE AWAY? With millions of people still unemployed, and many small business owners facing unnecessary government regulations, we think Dog Days will speak for a large swath of people wondering if the American Dream is worth pursuing.

—Aly Comingore TUE 2/4–11AM & FRI 2/7–7PM, METRO 4

WHEN DID YOU DECIDE TO START FILMING? During our dinner, Coite also explained the myriad, insane obstacles to street carts thriving in D.C., from hostile government regulations to an underground monopoly controlling what the cart owners were purchasing. We felt there independent.com presents

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A LA BIZKAINA Aritz Galarza

F

oodies around the world hold Spanish cuisine on a pedestal, and it’s no wonder why: The country is home to some of the best restaurants, chefs, wines, and preparations in the culinary lexicon. In Aritz Galarza’s latest doc, the foodcentric filmmaker explores Biscayne sauce (so named for his hometown of Bizkaina) and the deep-seeded meaning it has for both the Basque country and Spanish cooking at large.

WHAT SPARKED YOUR INTEREST IN BISCAYNE SAUCE? Celebrations in Bizkaina are directly in contact with food and especially with some traditional recipes. For example, on Christmas Eve it is very common to eat snails with Biscayne sauce, one of my favorite preparations with Bizkaina. This makes this sauce very special for Basque families.

[And then there’s] the mystery of why a sauce takes the name of a region. The last one was good enough reason to a start a documentary, in my opinion.

SPAIN’S CULINARY TRADITIONS ARE WORLD FAMOUS. WHAT IS IT ABOUT BASQUE FOOD THAT MAKES IT SO SPECIAL? I think that Basque gastronomy has a lot of particularities that makes it unique in the world, and this could be because of Basque country’s

geography. We have a privileged location that provides us the best products from the sea, the best meat from the farms, and also the best vegetables of the countryside. Having all of this high-quality product has caused the region to develop a particular culture of respect for the product. We’re always looking to the most fresh sensations in the way of cooking them, and trying to show the purest flavor without disturbing the dinner guest.

For example, the way we cook fish is closer to the Japanese way of working with it than some other cookeries. We could say that we warm up the fish more than cooking it. We like it almost crude.

This is cultural, and this is because we have always had fresh fish at our tables.

WHY DO YOU THINK FOOD AND COOKING MAKES COMPELLING ENTERTAINMENT? I think that food and cooking, like many other cultural facets, are interesting for many audiences. Cooking has an interactive [element] that many other subjects don’t: taste. This puts the spectator in a starring role. Another reason could be that food is a thing everybody deals with, a daily necessity everyone has. Each of us has our favorite and most hated dishes, and this builds a particular opinion of the subject and makes it interesting.

—Aly Comingore SAT 2/8–7PM, SB MUSEUM OF ART & SUN 2/9–2PM, METRO 4

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MAKE HUMMUS NOT WAR Trevor Graham

C

ould a regional love of hummus be the recipe for peace in the Middle East? That’s the question posed here, as cameras traverse the Middle East in the hopes of uncovering the true lineage of the region’s most recognizable dip. In the process, they discover the people, places, and stories behind the food — and begin to digest the impact eating can have on a community.

WAS THERE A DEFINITIVE AHA MOMENT THAT LED YOU TO PICKING UP A CAMERA? The aha moment was when I discovered in 2009 that Lebanon was contemplating suing Israel in an international court because the Lebanese considered the Israelis to have stolen their food by marketing hummus internationally as an Israeli food product. In Lebanon, this is no laughing matter. So here was yet another Middle East conflict, but this time in the kitchen.

WHAT SURPRISED YOU MOST? How passionately people on all sides of this culinary conflict passionately adore their hummus. How good the hummus was in many parts of Israel, because it’s made mostly by Palestinians. But the largest surprise was that everywhere you go in Lebanon, people of all makes and classes love their hummus, and it is excellent. One small humble café in Beirut

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attracted politicians, taxi drivers, and opera singers, rich and poor, simply because the hummus was so good. Hummus crosses the social divide.

WHAT’S YOUR HOPE FOR THE FILM? I have this crazy idea: Could a regional love of hummus be the recipe for peace in the Middle East? It’s wacky, but that was the starting point for this film’s delicious hummus journey.

FINALLY, HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR HUMMUS? I make my hummus with lots of garlic and freshly ground black pepper. So I like my hummus peppery and spicy.

—Aly Comingore

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BOTTLED UP: THE BATTLE OVER DUBLIN DR. PEPPER Don Merritt

I

n 1891, a Dublin, Texas, company became the first to bottle Dr. Pepper, and the tradition — including the use of pure cane sugar, when the rest of the bottlers turned to high fructose corn syrup — continued until 2012, when the Dr. Pepper-Snapple corporation sued to shut them down. That nearly killed the town of Dublin and offended the whole Lone Star State, whose ongoing rage over soda pop is served up in this compelling film.

HOW IS DUBLIN BOTTLING WORKS DOING NOW? They have almost a dozen new soft drinks. Seems like everywhere I go, be it restaurants, grocery stores, and even hardware stores, I see DBW’s new sodas all over Texas. I’ve heard it’s out on the West Coast, too. But I imagine it is very tough on them: Dublin Dr. Pepper was over 70 percent of their sales. People used to buy cases and cases of Dublins.

—Matt Kettmann SAT 2/1–4PM , METRO 4 & MON 2/3–1PM, SB MUSEUM OF ART

WERE YOU A DUBLIN DR. PEPPER FAN? I was indeed. A good friend of mine who inspired Bottled Up was a huge fan of Dublin Dr. Pepper, and we made road trips there all the time.

Dublin, TX, is a little over two hours southwest of Dallas and, although not as breathtaking as your beautiful coastline, the hills of Central Texas are great and make for a really fun day trip.

WERE YOU SURPRISED HOW MUCH EMOTION WAS WRAPPED AROUND A SODA? I asked that question to almost everyone we interviewed! To the level that a person assaulted our cameraman during filming? Yes, I am surprised. But anything that takes you back to your nostalgic past, particularly one that you can smell and taste like a Dublin Dr. Pepper, then I’m not surprised at all. Especially when you tell those people they can never have it again....

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CÉSAR’S GRILL Dario Aguirre

Y

ou don’t need a movie to tell you that family dynamics are a tricky beast, but this does a nice job of spinning the tale of a dysfunctional relationship into a harrowing little documentary about father, son, and food.

The plot is simple enough: Dario, a vegetarian, lives in Germany, about 6,000 miles from his family and native land of Ecuador. Meanwhile, back home, dad’s meat-centric restaurant is floundering, and Dario’s financial help appears to be its last chance for survival. Against his better instincts, Dario returns home and attempts to help his old man climb out of debt.

The relationship is strained, ’til mom falls ill and the two men reconnect in a way that’s both touching and refreshingly free of sentimental chatter.

WHAT MADE YOU THINK HIS STORY COULD BECOME A FEATURE FILM? I began to suspect that my situation was more complicated than I thought. I had a lot of questions and no answers, and no idea how to resolve the conflict with my father. Other people have similar family problems, but nobody talks out [about it].

with the restaurant, and he helped me with the film. But later on after my mum has died, the camera helped us to be able to speak with each other. The camera became a kind of mediatory.

One month after my mum had passed away, my father asked me, “When we will go on filming?” A camera has a magical effect — people join you. It’s like playing a guitar.

HOW DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU CHANGED? Now I can understand a little bit better how family structures work. And I discovered that family and political structures work very similarly. But this was not the only thing; every time I see the film, I still discover new things about our relationship and my family. The film changed the relationship with my father; now we talk turkey with each other.

—Aly Comingore MON 2/3–7PM & WED 2/5–4PM, SB MUSEUM OF ART THU 2/6–7PM , METRO 4

HOW DID YOUR FATHER REACT TO THE IDEA OF FILMING THIS INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT TIME IN HIS LIFE? At the beginning it was okay for him because it was like our first common project. I helped him independent.com presents

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