Cafeteria Man

We all love food. As a society, we devour countless cooking shows, culinary magazines and foodie blogs. So how could we possibly be throwing nearly 50% of it in the trash? Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping and survive only on discarded food. What they find is truly shocking.

A film about the importance of heirloom seeds to the agriculture of the world, focusing on seed keepers and activists from around the world.

Part food doc, part comedy special, Gutbuster follows unhealthy stand-up comedian Dave Stone on a cross-country tour after a sobering health diagnosis pushes him toward a major lifestyle change. He talks to farmers, doctors and academics by day, compiling his own idiot's guide to the modern American meal, then makes funny about his experiences onstage by night.

Clarissa Dickson Wright tracks down Britain's oldest known cookbook, The Forme of Cury. This 700-year-old scroll was written during the reign of King Richard II from recipes created by the king's master chefs. How did this ancient manuscript influence the way people eat today? On her culinary journey through medieval history she reawakens recipes that have lain dormant for centuries and discovers dishes that are still prepared now.

Bananas, eggs, and tuna: three basic foodstuffs with three wildly different points of origin. Moullet begins with these on his plate but constructs his film by working backwards and finding the sources for these items and how they reach our plates. As Moullet’s investigation deepens, however, the film moves beyond the confines of a simple exploration of food origins into more political and social realms, not only relating to food but also to the medium of film.

The French pastry again on the roof of the world! On January 23rd, France is awarded for the 8th time wins the pastry world cup again, one of the most prestigious international competitions of gastronomy. France thus remains the most successful country to this day. But the conquest of the world of the French pastry does not limit itself to awards. The know-how and the French creative genius are durably exported and spreads over all the regions of the world!

Our protagonists are part of these "pastry magicians" who take up the challenge of making, reinventing and transmitting to the whole world the taste of local delicacies. Through their pastries and their stories of passion and challenge, we will meet men and women who are passionate about the pastries of their regions. We will follow these musketeers in their adventures, their setbacks and their joy of living.

This explores the reality of chefs and cooks as they struggle to create dishes and experiences enjoyed on a daily basis. The restaurant industry is a tough business, not just for profits, but for everyone involved.

While the debate continues about GMOs, Roundup and other toxic pesticides, this powerful film shares remarkable stories of people who regain their health after discovering the secret ingredients in their food and making a bold commitment to avoid them.

More and more people are suffering from wheat and gluten intolerance. Wheat protein was long considered to be the cause of this scourge, and today gluten free products are on all the supermarket shelves. However, there is now increasing suspicion that it is not wheat but how it is processed that makes bread a potentially unhealthy food. Industrial processes simply do not give bread enough time to mature. More and more bakeries are reacting to this by introducing former production methods and ingredients such as champagne rye, emmer or in vogue chia seeds. Bread is baked according to old recipes, sometimes using home grown and home milled grains.

Ayi comes from a rural area of Eastern China and doesn’t have the residential permit that would allow her to work in Shanghai. Yet, she has been cooking in the streets for twenty years, in an old neighbourhood soon to be demolished. The film unveils the chaos of an ultra-modern city aiming to wipe out so-called substandard practices and to deport an unwanted population.

The meals based on indigenous ingredients and sustainability at the forefront. Project managers are soon faced with problems ranging from sourcing ingredients to staffing a high-end restaurant in a location inhabited by only 53 people.

State of Bacon tells the kinda real but mostly fake tale of an oddball group of characters leading up to the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon-enthusiasts, Governor Branstad, a bacon queen, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, members of PETA, and an envoy of Icelanders are not excluded from this bacon party and during the course of the film become intertwined with the organizers of the festival to show that bacon diplomacy is not dead.

After years of overproduction, the Reagan administration unloads over 500 million pounds of surplus cheese on the American public in the 1980s. The pungent dairy product comes to be known as 'Government Cheese.'

Beginning with a private, rolling party on board one of Hong Kong's iconic streetcars, travel journalist Rudy Maxa and former chef and now Washington, D.C. restaurateur Daisuke Utagawa lead viewers through on of the worlds most exciting cities. Hong Kong takes cuisine from around the world and makes it its own. Explore the cuisine as well as the mostly unknown, lush side of Hong Kong where hiking trails and beaches rule. Bangkok - In a city where the weather is always hot, it is natural that residents spend so much time eating outside. Street food rules the capital of Thailand, and no visitor should miss the opportunity to follow local custom. Utagawa and Maxa taste their way through the city while exploring the Klongs (canals) and temples that make Bangkok a visitors paradise.

How safe is the future of the world’s food? This documentary explores a growing crisis in world agriculture. Plant breeding has created today’s crops, which are high yielding but vulnerable to disease and insects. To keep crops healthy, breeders tap all the genetic diversity of the world’s food plants. But that rich resource is quickly being wiped out. (NFB)

A unique project, the popular science series "Bread" is shooting around the world, interviews with scientists and world-class experts. There are 4 series in the project: "Immortality", "Money", "Hunger" and "Gene". This is a story about how bread controlled the destinies of continents and empires, how the rise of some civilizations and the fall of others depended on it, how in different countries and at different times it performed the function of money. This is the first time such a complete study of bread and grain is being carried out on a television screen. The focus is on the most interesting events in the history of Russia, Italy, France, Germany, England, China, Egypt and other countries.

Each grain crop - wheat, rye, rice and corn - has been "creating" a special type of person for centuries. For example, rye formed the Slavic culture, wheat influenced the inhabitants of almost all of Central Europe and a significant part of Asia, corn formed the inhabitants from Mexico to Nicaragua, and rice - representatives of Japan, India and China. Today, genetic engineers are trying to create the bread of the future. It is likely that after some time we will have three-dimensional food printers in our kitchens that will be able to "print" buns, loaves or confectionery. However, scientists are convinced that only part of the components for the "printer" will be chemical, and the rest of the components will continue to be grown on earth. At the same time, some researchers believe that genetic engineering may turn out to be a "Pandora's box", while others are sure that they can no longer do without it.

Keith Allen meets his long-term hero, Keith Floyd, who transformed the presentation of gastronomy on British television.

A 1970s American elementary school program encouraging students to figure out for themselves the universal building blocks of human community — family, work, faith, etc. — inflamed political sensitivities so intensely it was shelved and forgotten. Archive footage of the documentary film series at the program's core, classroom exchanges, and the ensuing controversy frames larger issues of education, politics and ideology.