At first, it may sound like a film you'd only be into if you appreciated French pastry or cooking competitions. But Hegedus and Pennebaker manage to draw you in quickly and don't let go until the very end. Like most good documentaries, you connect with the characters and begin to understand each man's motivation for competing as you get a glimpse into their home and work life. In this sense, you become invested in the outcome of the competition just like the competitor's own spouses or children. In addition to rooting for each contestant, you'll find yourself puzzling over the level of commitment it takes to prepare. There is so much to give up: time with family and kids, being fully present at work, and a normal social life. One of the contestants insists that when he and his wife were remodeling their home, they had to add a pastry workshop in the basement for him to practice and prepare for the competition.

I found myself rooting for Jacquy Pfeiffer, an Alsace-born, Chicago-based chef who has both determination and drive but also humility and perspective. While working on an elaborate wedding cake, he smiles and says "If you whistle it works better." While he may not be as piercingly intense as the other contestants, Pfeiffer is obviously immensely talented and confident that he's a sure contender. Here he is shaping his chocolate sculpture:

As you can probably imagine, not all goes as planned at the competition. To avoid any misteps, each contestant does a three-day trial run to try and work out the kinks. Sugar flower work for eight hours at a time without stopping for food or much drink? Check. Putting the finishing touches on an elaborate sugar sculpture only to break it when making an adjustment? Check. The stakes are obviously high. No amount of practice can prepare each man for how he'll perform on any given day. And the judges, having each gone through the same competition at one point in their lives, relate and sympathize with this pressure. When reading the name of the winners, the judge is obviously shaken and has difficulty saying the names out loud. By this point, they've witnessed sixteen sure winners, so it must be unimaginably difficult to announce that three years of one's life have been spent without anything to take back to show for it. One gentleman in the film is competing for his fourth time: sixteen years of constant preparation!

As the head of the jury says "Your mind has to work as hard as your hands." And this is, I think, at the crux of the fascination with this film: it's difficult for many of us to imagine this kind of focused and relentlessly enduring determination towards any one thing for years upon years. It's not just an interest, a hobby, or a passion. It seems to be more of a fire--something each finalist feels like they must do. And by the end of the film, you'll be surprised at who earns the "collar" and who is ultimately sent home to consider competing again or throwing in the towel. It's a touching, emotional, and thought-provoking film. Whether you're interested in food films or not, the topic at hand isn't really what this movie is about. It's really about heart. And that's where we all meet at the same table.

Image Credit: Film Forum

It was Maggie Smith. Maggie Smith and her cocktail parties. I don't think my father had any idea what he was getting me into when he took me to see that picture.

It was a simple scene, really-- almost a throw-away, apart from firming up the tension between Diana Rigg's Arlena Marshall and just about everyone else residing at an exclusive, Mediterranean island resort. While passing around a tray of hors d'oeuvres to her guests, Smith asks the world-famous detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) if he would care for a cocktail. "Care for a cocktail, Monsieur Poirot? A White Lady, Sidecar, Mainbrace, or Between the Sheets?" Poirot rejects them all and asks instead for either crème de cassis or sirop de banane. With a bit of a sigh, she acquiesces, only to move on to offering Diana Rigg a sausage-- the one thing of which one would think she had had enough, given her proclivities.

And that was it. I followed the murder well enough, and the inevitable, intricate unveiling of who-done-what. But I kept thinking about those cocktails. As I sat in that theater, I decided that I was going to be the sort of chap who drank Sidecars and Between the Sheets while Cole Porter tunes were played somewhere out of sight on a piano. I filed their names away in my memory and bided my time.

When the appropriately legal time finally came nine years later, I unleashed my inner Maggie Smith, marched into a very (to me) upper, upper lounge in Los Angeles, and ordered a Between the Sheets from the bartender.

"I'm sorry," he said, "You're going to have to tell me what's in it." When I recovered sufficiently from the shock, I next asked for a Sidecar. "Can you tell me what's in a Sidecar? Maybe if you knew what you were asking for, I could help you." Devastated, I settled for a martini to drown my nine years-worth of disappointment. How on earth could a bartender at the Atlas Bar & Grille-- a place decorated in the luxe fashion of a 1930's Supper Club, a venue that showed old films from that era on a giant screen, no less-- not know how to make a Between the Sheets? Given its Hollywood location, I should have realized that everything, maybe even my beloved fantasy cocktail, was an illusion.

Perhaps he was right-- I should have done a little research. I bought a book of classic cocktail recipes, just to make sure the screenwriters hadn't made up the names.

They did not.

Very much relieved and filled with renewed hope, I made my way back to the bar the following week-- this time armed with the recipe. I called out the ingredients in a voice that was only vaguely Smith-like, and finally got what I'd been waiting for. I got my Between the Sheets.

Between the Sheets

Like most cocktails, the origin of the Between the Sheets is murky. Some people believe it was created at Harry's New York Bar in Paris (the place, incidentally, where George Gershwin partly composed An American in Paris) in the 1930's. Others hold fast to the notion that it was the brainchild of a bartender at the Berkeley Hotel in London in 1921. It doesn't matter much to me. I'm just grateful that someone created it.

The Between the Sheets is a very close cousin to the Sidecar-- a drink most bartenders now know, thanks to the surge of interest in classic cocktails. Made of white rum, brandy, and Cointreau, it even comes with a sugared rim. It is a tart, refreshing member of the sour family of alcoholic beverages.

The following recipe is not the classic one. While white rum is well and good in its place, I think it has a bit of trouble competing with the brandy and other flavorings. I have substituted my favorite dark rum instead, which makes its own, indelible impression without overpowering the other players.

Not unlike Dame Maggie Smith herself, if you ask me. I know you didn't ask me, but if you did, that is what I would tell you.

Ingredients

1 ounce dark rum. My personal preference is Zaya (thank you, Shannon).

1 ounce brandy

1/2 ounce Cointreau

1/2 ounce lemon juice

1/2 ounce simple syrup

Ice

A twist of lemon or orange peel for garnish, which is purely optional. Or sausage, if you are feeling saucy enough and think you can pull it off.

Preparation:

In a cocktail shaker, insert ice. Pour all liquid ingredient over ice. Close lid of shaker. Shake vigorously and pour into an awaiting martini glass. Garnish, if that pleases you.

Just a mile from the skyscrapers of downtown Pasadena lies a tiny plot of land that has become the heart of an urban homesteading movement. The raised beds of the Dervaes family farm cover 1/10 of an acre. Imagine the area from a football field's goal line to the very first 10-yard mark, or if you're an average suburban homeowner, scan your backyard. Now, imagine harvesting 3 tons of organic food from this short span of soil every year.

Robert McFall's documentary, Homegrown, is an intimate family portrait that reveals both the visionary inspiration and the resolute dedication required to grow one's own food. For Jules and his adult children, Justin, Anais, and Jordanne, the Dervaes farm began as an experiment to see how much of their own food they could grow. A natural extension of the father's experience during the back-to-the-land heyday of the 60s and 70s, their gardens soon led to living off-the-grid. They catch rainwater and recycle grey water, keep animals for manure and collect oil from nearby restaurants to produce their own biofuel. They order hand-cranked appliances from Amish catalogs. They put up their own green beans and illuminate their home with a self-reliant mix of olive oil lamps, biodiesel lamps, homemade candles, daylighting and the occasional fluorescent bulb.

Jules speaks of how we can save the world by taking care of our six inches of topsoil. Like farming, living off the grid began as a political statement and personal challenge. It has since grown into an integral part of their working farm. His children have absorbed his lessons and, like him, have chosen to make it a way of life.

The film includes the usual scenes of the family picking and eating ripe tomatoes from their garden--a trope of any story remotely related to sustainable agriculture. What distinguishes the kitchen and dining room scenes in Homegrown is the image of the Dervaes repeating this meal day in, day out. In a country where one's teen years are simply an extended, fight-filled countdown to the freedom of flight, it's astonishing to see all three grown children living and working so closely, so contentedly alongside their father. Organic, locally based, and ecologically sound agriculture requires huge amounts of labor. We often forget the "family" half of the equation in family farming. Watching older and younger generations working together is a reminder that there are still deeper cultural changes required for a truly sustainable society.

After a meal at their table, we're invited to sit in on one of the family's operational meetings. Here, the reality of business collides with the purity of the Dervaes' ideals. An extended discussion about accepting advertisements on their website highlights the challenges of making real-world decisions while pursuing deeply philosophical and political goals. With over 4,000 visitors each day, PathToFreedom.com could bring in significant income. The opportunity to make an additional $10,000 a month on a farm that grosses under $40,000 a year cannot be dismissed, and the debate marks a milestone for the family.

Jules fears that once they walk the path of easy money, they'll never return to the hard work of farming. His children, the ones who design, code and maintain the website, believe ads are a minor concession: why shouldn't they benefit financially from the enormous amount of experience gained through their own hard work and offered so long for free? The thought of ads, even for supportive seed companies they favor, visibly pains Jules. The younger generation is respectful enough to allow their father to override, for now, their willingness to take on a bit more of capitalism's gloss as their homestead matures into a profitable business.

It's obvious that there will be many more meetings and delicately balanced debates about the future of the farm. Building their client list, gathering a strong community of supporters, making wise choices, growing their business as purely and sustainably as the delicate lettuces they harvest, and establishing new homesteads in turn for each of the children--it will be a lifetime of growing and learning for the Devaes family. Homegrown is a privileged gaze onto that rare, difficult journey.

UPCOMING SCREENINGS

Mill Valley Film Festival

Sunday, October 11, 1:00 PM
CinéArts at Sequoia
25 Throckmorton Ave.
Mill Valley, CA 94941
Map

Tuesday, October 13, 6:45 PM
Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center
1118 Fourth Street
San Rafael, CA 94901
Map

San Francisco Documentary Film Festival

Saturday, October 17, 7:00 PM
Thursday, October 22, 9:15 PM
The Roxie Theater
3117 16th Street
San Francisco, CA
(415)-863-1087
Map

The Garden is a documentary film about the life and death of a community garden in Los Angeles. After the 1992 Rodney King riots which fractured the South Central Los Angeles community, the City of Los Angeles allotted a 14-acre piece of property to the community, allowing them to create farm plots for 347 families on the corner of 41st and Alameda (two miles from the location of my grandfather's restaurant). The creation of this garden made it the largest community garden in the United States.

In 2003, after the garden had been in existence for eleven years, the City sold the property to Ralph Horowitz in a secret deal, and the new owner attempted to evict the farmers. The battle went back and forth for several years before the farm was bulldozed in a dramatic action in 2006. I am simplifying this story greatly -- it involves backroom deals, corruption, the promise of a soccer field, infighting among the farmers, inexplicable court decisions, celebrities helping to save the farm and a furious rant by the landowner who ultimately refused to sell the property to the farmers at any price.

And interspersed between all of the drama to protect this property, we see a beautiful, peaceful garden where the families grow bananas, papayas, guavas, nopales, cilantro, and many other crops for their families. It's calm among the chaos that creates a perfect foil for this story.

I can't remember the last time I was so affected by a scene in a movie as I was watching the scene where the garden was destroyed after the final eviction notice was served. In front of the eyes of the farmers who had worked the land for 14 years, after innumerable fights, the garden was destroyed. Ralph Horowitz has not developed the land, and as of the time of movie publication it was still a vacant lot.

The community that developed around the garden is still going strong -- they are looking for land in the area, and have started an 80-acre farm in Bakersfield that sells to Southern California farmers markets, and provides a CSA for local customers.

I highly recommend seeing this film while it's in theaters, and I hope that it gets a wider release. The Garden is now playing at the Landmark Lumiere in San Francisco and the Elmwood Theatre in Berkeley.

Other resources:
The Garden on Facebook
Huffington Post interview with the Director
Chicago Tribune profile