Food and Film: Origins of a Meal

In-person: chef and restaurateur Alice Waters.

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Co-presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Hammer Museum, Food and Film is a quarterly series designed to delight the senses and inspire the mind. Curated with renowned chef, activist and cinephile Alice Waters, each program in the series draws on Waters’ philosophy that eating, like art, is a political act and that exploring the intersections between the culinary and moving image arts can help illuminate the path toward building more sustainable, thriving communities together. Indeed, communion is central to the series, with each screening paired with special guests and a special dinner at Lulu(opens in a new tab) restaurant at the Hammer Museum, Waters’ latest culinary celebration.

Origins of a Meal

Genèse d'un repas, France, 1979

Cahiers du Cinéma critic-turned-filmmaker, French New Wave writer-director Luc Moullet got a jump on cinematic critiques of neoliberalism with this seminal exposé of globalized, industrial farming at the moment it was taking shape. Moullet begins with a simple (if unorthodox) meal of a banana, tuna fish and a plain omelet then traces the path that each ingredient took to arrive at his plate. From a grocery store in Paris to fields in Ecuador and ports along the Ivory Coast, Moullet talks with corporate managers, government functionaries, marketing gurus and manual laborers all along the line to understand the human and environmental costs of this emergent system and its colonialist roots. As those costs have grown ever more pernicious, Moullet's prescient, in-depth analysis seems ever more vital.

DCP, b&w, in French with English subtitles, 115 min. Director: Luc Moullet.