Our Daily Bread (2005, Nikolaus Geyrhalter), documentary about food production
 

http://i.imgur.com/VvaVR.jpg

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765849/

I just saw this rather remarkable film. It is basically about 85 minutes of high-quality footage of modern food production (both meat and plants), all or virtually all shot in Europe. There is no narration, no music and no dialogue at all, just footage. It is to food production what Baraka was to world culture and the environment.

Sound boring? It wasn't...at all. It was fascinating. It is not exploitative at all. There is some slaughterhouse footage but not really very much (probably 10 minutes total of the film, if that) and what there is is not particularly gruesome. It is not some sort of leftist indictment of the food industry. The real theme through most of it, if there is one, is the amazing role that technology and automation plays in modern food production.

As an Austrian director and photographer, Geyrhalter probably would have filmed in Europe anyway, but it occurred to me while watching it that he probably couldn't have filmed much of it in the U.S. as American agribusiness has become so suspicious of filmmakers and journalists he never would have gotten permission to shoot at the domestic equivalent of many of the places he filmed in Europe.

Re: Our Daily Bread (2005, Nikolaus Geyrhalter), documentary about food production
 

Ah, this is the film that inspired Does Bread Shrink When You Freeze It?.