Moon Winx Films in association with the Independent Television Service
& Alabama Public Television presents
a story about why food matters
WORLD PREMIERE SXSW 2012
Yale Environmental Film Festival
WINNER Grand Jury Prize, Indie Grits Film Festival
Full Frame Film Festival
Little Rock Film Festival
New Orleans Film Festival
San Francisco DocFest
Napa Valley Film Festival
WINNER Best Alabama Film, Sidewalk Film Festival
NATIONAL PBS BROADCSAST JULY 2013
www.eatingalabama.com
62 mins – US – 2012
HDCam 1080p/24p/16x9 + Stereo
FILMMAKER CONTACT:
Andrew Beck Grace
Moon Winx Films
[email protected]
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SYNOPSIS
Returning to Alabama, a couple sets out to eat the way their grandparents did – seasonally
and locally. But soon they realize that everything about the food system has changed since
their families left the farm. What follows is an introspective and often funny meditation on
community, the South and sustainability.
REVIEWS
"Both funny and insightful, Eating Alabama delves into our often complex relationship to the
food we eat and the people who grow it, and what food can teach us about community"
-Garden & Gun
"a beautiful odyssey"
-The Oxford American
"a film that artfully combines one family’s story with an in-depth look at
a group of small farmers committed to rebuilding the local food system in the South."
-Madeline Ross, Grist
"A personal and historical tale, it strikes a powerful and entertaining balance…"
-John Fink, The Film Stage
"Grace’s contemplative voyage through the Alabaman food-scape elucidates
myriad food issues facing our society today."
-Tahria Sheather, Sage Magazine
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT – MARCH 2012
by Andrew Beck Grace
Four years ago, when I first started making this film, I thought I had a simple story on my
hands.
My wife Rashmi and I had recently moved back to our home state of Alabama after living a
few years out West. All of my family is from the South, but I've always had a kind of love/hate
relationship with the place. Like many young Southerners growing up here, all I'd wanted to
do was get out. But the older I got, the more I felt drawn back to it – no matter how tortured
and complicated its past.
In addition, we'd also gotten very interested in food. During graduate school I taught myself
how to bake instead of reading Foucault, and we found ourselves preparing ever more
complicated meals. And it seemed like lots of folks were starting to think critically about food –
Michael Pollan wrote “The Omnivore's Dilemma” and people began to rediscover the work of
Wendell Berry and others. Suddenly, it struck me as odd that I didn't know a single farmer.
How could I know so little about my food - about this primal thing that keeps us alive, this
thing I do three times a day?
So Rashmi and I decided to do something bold – we decided to eat only food grown or raised
in Alabama. We would go out into the rural parts of the state, find all the farmers I assumed
were out there, and make a movie about how rewarding and gratifying it was to eat locally.
That was the simple story I thought I would tell. But, as often happens, the truth became
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much more complicated.
As we began our journey, I quickly realized that there just aren't that many farmers left in
Alabama. Fewer farmers worked larger acreages, more of whom had to have additional jobs
off the farm. And all these realizations kept pointing back to my own family's story. My
granddaddy grew up on a farm, but made a pretty difficult and conscious decision to leave
around WWII. But he was never truly able to leave – he moved to a house overlooking
farmland, grew a huge garden every year, and told me countless stories about life on the
farm. So as I began to investigate how our food system had gotten so mechanized and
corporatized in such a relatively short amount of time, I couldn't separate myself and my
family from the story.
The result is EATING ALABAMA – a personal essay about why food matters. I'm not very
interested in essayists who know exactly what they think. That's not much of a story. For me,
the process of making the film was a process of discovery – and that process has become the
film itself. It's not a movie that proposes grand and sweeping changes to fix what's wrong with
our food system. Instead, it's a movie about how slowing down, working hard, and sharing
good food can go a long way toward living a good life.
KEY CREATIVE PERSONELL
WRITER / PRODUCER / PHOTOGRAPHER / EDITOR ANDREW BECK GRACE was born and
raised in north Alabama. He is an independent documentary filmmaker whose films have
aired on Public Television stations and at film festivals across the country. He received an MA
in American Studies from the University of Wyoming where he made his first documentary
feature about the reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand in southern Montana. After a few years
in the West, making films, freelancing for magazines and working as a producer for NPR
News, he moved back to his home state to tell stories about the Deep South. At The
University of Alabama he teaches and oversees a unique interdisciplinary social justice
documentary program called Documenting Justice, and was recently named by The Oxford
American one of the “Most Creative Teachers in the South.” In 2009 he was invited to attend
the CPB/PBS Producers Academy at WGBH. He's also a writer whose nonfiction has been
nominated for a Puschcart Prize.
EDITOR / CO-PRODUCER BARTLEY POWERS is a film and television editor. Over the last
eight years he's worked on numerous television, narrative, new media, and documentary
projects for companies such as FOX TELEVISION, THE ANNENBERG FOUNDATION, NFL,
GOOGLE, and PARAMOUNT. His recent work includes additional editing on feature
documentary BOB AND THE MONSTER, which premiered at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival
and screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest, AFI/Silverdocs, Hot Docs, and IDFA, and the feature
documentary EATING ALABAMA, which premiered at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival and will
air nationally on PBS in July 2013. He is currently based in Los Angeles.
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COMPLETE CREDITS
filmed, written, and produced by
Andrew Beck Grace
edited by
Andrew Beck Grace & Bartley Powers
Original music by
The Archibalds
Co-producer
Bartley Powers
Additional camera
Justin Gaar
Re-recording mixer
Nick Punch
Colorist
Chris Tomberlin
Outpost Pictures
Title design by
Amanda Buck
Editorial consultant
Fernanda Rossi
Additional editing
Paul Rogers
Production Assistant
Carly Palmour
Still Photography by
Laura Shill
Archival images courtesy
FSA, Library of Congress
Benjamin and Gladys Thomas Air Photo Archives, UCLA
Original Music performed by
Joey Thompson, Seth Gibbs, Jared Hall, Jeff Johnston, Andrew Beck Grace
Engineered by
Seth Gibbs
Additional Music by
David Hickox
Red Mountain, White Trash
“Rushmore”
written and performed by Erick Friedlander
“Eating Alabama Thump”
written and performed by John Smith
“Elrod”
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written by Elliot McPherson
performed by The Dextateens
“Loud”
written by Mike Lewis
performed by Dosh
“O Camellia”
written by Joey Thompson
performed by The Archibalds
Additional funding provided by
Alabama State Council on the Arts
Alabama Humanities Foundation
Executive Producer for Alabama Public Television
Christopher Holmes
Executive producer for ITVS
Sally Jo Fifer
“Eating Alabama” is a co-production of
Moon Winx Films & The Independent Television Service (ITVS)
with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Produced by Moon Winx Films, who is solely responsible for its content.
©2013 Moon Winx Films, LLC
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