See the Movie, Pass on the Hot Dog

By Andrew Jenkins in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 27, 2006 9:43PM

We’re not sure what Facets connection to the culinary sphere is, but they’ve got another food-related documentary running through this Thursday. This time it’s a film that shares a glimpse into the eerie world of industrial food production. Our Daily Bread documents the goings-on and the mechanized workings of modern farms and slaughterhouses. Yikes. OK, we haven’t actually seen Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s movie quite yet (look for us there this week), but the trailers of this one look pretty darn good/horrifying/insightful.

With a documentary covering this subject you’d expect there to be damning interviews from corporate whistleblowers and so forth and so on. But Geyrhalter kind of goes the opposite direction and paints a picture of high-tech farms and meat packing facilities using only things like the hum of machines and clucking of chickens as background noise. From what we can tell, the lack of narration has a chilling effect and makes the images even that more poignant. Beyond some of the gruesome scenes, it looks like Bread aims to show us what it takes for our population to live the lifestyle that we do, and it doesn’t look pretty. If you were inclined to see Bread and the film adaptation of "Fast Food Nation" in one day you might never eat again.