BLOCK F: DRNISKI PRSUT, Food Tastes Better Outside: A Forager's Feast, The Truffle Hunters

The Truffle Hunters

Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw  Italy  2020  84:00  

Deep in the forests of Northern Italy resides the prized white Alba truffle. Desired by the wealthiest patrons in the world, it remains a pungent but rarified mystery. It cannot be cultivated or found, even by the most resourceful of modern excavators. The only souls on Earth who know how to dig it up are a tiny circle of canines and their silver-haired human companions—Italian elders with walking sticks and devilish senses of humor—who only scour for the truffle at night so as not to leave any clues for others. Still, this small enclave of hunters induces a feverish buying market that spans the globe. With unprecedented access to the elusive truffle hunters, filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw (The Last Race, 2018 Sundance Film Festival) follow this maddening cycle from the forest floor to the pristine restaurant plate. With a wily and absurdist flare, The Truffle Hunters captures a precarious ritual constantly threatened by greed and outside influences but still somehow protected by those clever, tight-lipped few who know how to unearth the magic within nature.

Specifications

• Original Languages: Italian
• Genre: Documentary
• Running Time: 84 min
• Year: 2020

Food Tastes Better Outside: A Forager's Feast

Cam MacArthur 2020 Canada 7:10

Featuring local chef, freediver, forager and 2019's Top Chef Canada Winner Paul Moran. Known for always bringing a piece of the wild into his dishes. Just how we like them.⁠

⁠For this special festive episode of the delicious series of Ecologyst's Food Tastes Better Outside, join the group to travel across Vancouver Island to Tofino before this wave of lockdowns. Breathing in the salt air deeply, and revelling in the abundant foods British Columbia's local coastline offers if you know where to look. Lucky for us, Chef Paul Moran knows exactly that — splitting the day between fishing from the boat and watching him freedive to watery depths before popping up with foraged sea urchins, kelp, and crab. 

A festive, winter feast of a different kind. It's inspired us to play with what we serve up on our holiday table, and reminded us how much we'd been missing dining communally with good friends.

****Be sure to head out with a knowledgeable guide when first delving into the world of foraging. And never eat something you can't identify with certainty.⁠

Director Biography

Cam MacArthur is a film director with Ecologyst Films from Victoria BC who has found a niche in short conservation-based documentaries. His directorial debut about Ocean plastics, “Plastic Beach”, was chosen to screen at the Omnimax theatre in Science World for the Elements International Film Festival, and since then Cam has directed a number of short films that cover topics from overfishing in the Salish Sea, to preserving British Columbia’s remaining ancient forests.

Director Statement

I am a self-taught, documentary filmmaker based in Victoria BC. For the past three years I have been the director ecologyst films', the production house created by ecologyst clothing. This experience has brought me into the world of conservation and environmental storytelling which has been the back bone of many of my films. My future ambitions include feature length documentaries, focusing on the outdoors, conservation and inspiring ways of living.

DRNISKI PRSUT

NORTH AMERICA PREMIERE

Tony Marin  Australia  2021  27:15 

Against the backdrop of a medieval Croatian village unfolds the story of Drniski Prsut, a world renowned prosciutto produced from locally raised and fed stock and cured using a centuries old recipe. Drniski Prsut tells the history of this picturesque town through its people and their relationship to this famed delicacy; from the unique micro-climate which provides the drying conditions essential for its legendary aroma, to the political and cultural influences which have shaped its flavour and reputation.

Director Biography

Tony Marin is a Melbourne based freelance filmmaker who observes and records, casting a spontaneous and playful eye over the characters and events which define his culture and community. Through his passion for cinematography, Tony has been refining his own impromptu and intimate style of documentary filmmaking, building stories through editing and composition; real people and true stories are highlighted through a rich, deep and colourful approach to picture making. Working with both the narratives of local tradition and the energy of contemporary urban contexts, Tony’s films explore the lives of his protagonists and their relationship to the spaces they live, work and play in.

Drawing on his experience working in London with leading food photographer Martin Brigdale, and the culinary history of his family’s home town, Tony continues to explore the culture of cuisine with Drniski Prsut (2021), the story of a medieval Croatian village and the 500 year history of their world-renowned smoked prosciutto.

Screened on television and at short film festivals around the world, Tony’s previous films include; Marcello (2015), a studied impression of a local legend of Melbourne’s Italian community who cooked and served homemade food and hosted card games for locals who gathered daily as they had done since the 1960s, which featured at the Festival of World Cinema, Milan (2016), the NYC Short Documentary Festival, New York (2017) and was a winner of the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards in 2016, and Crazy Ballers (2017), which captures the interaction of several ethnic communities as they gather in Melbourne’s city centre to play street basketball.

Specifications

• Project Title (Original Language): Drnis prosciutto
• Project Type: Documentary
• Runtime: 27 minutes
• Completion Date: July 12, 2021
• Production Budget: 21,000 AUD
• Country of Origin: Australia
• Country of Filming: Croatia
• Language: Croatian
• Shooting Format: Digital, 35mm
• Aspect Ratio: 16:9