How to Cook Your Life (2007)

Calificación de los usuarios:

6.0/10   

Director:

Doris Dörrie

Guionista:

Doris Dörrie (writer)

Fecha de Lanzamiento:

2007 (Austria)

Género:

Documental

Plot:

A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life. |

Plot Keywords:

Zen | Chef

Comentarios de los usuarios:

When you wash the rice, wash the rice

Reparto

Edward Espe Brown	...	Himself
Doris Dörrie	...	Herself

Dirigida por
Doris Dörrie

Créditos del guión
Doris Dörrie		(writer)

Producida por
Franz X. Gernstl	....	producer
Fidelis Mager	....	producer
Richard Sterling	....	line producer

Fotografía por
Doris Dörrie
Jörg Jeshel

Montaje por
Suzi Giebler

Dirección de producción
Annika Herr	....	production manager

Departamento de sonido
Magda Habernickel	....	sound editor
Max Rammler-Rogall	....	sound mixer
Stefan Ravasz	....	sound
Marcel Spisak	....	sound designer

Cámara y Departamento Eléctrico
Karin Haider	....	still photographer
Robert Mayer	....	carving photography

Departamento de Edición
Tobias Bohlinger	....	post-production coordinator
Boris Link	....	colorist
Werner Pertl	....	post-production coordinator

Otros miembros del equipo
Solveig Langeland	....	world sales
Beatrix Wesle	....	world sales

Gracias
Matthias Brauner	....	special thanks
Michael Hackl	....	special thanks
Kathie Klippe	....	special thanks
Christian Littmann	....	special thanks
Thomas Orthofer	....	special thanks
Mary Ann Otemann	....	special thanks
Monika Petrinic	....	special thanks
Angela Reedwisch	....	special thanks
Angie Reichenberger	....	special thanks
Josef Reidinger	....	special thanks

Compañías Productores

• Megaherz TV Fernsehproduktion GmbH

Distribuidores

• MFA Filmdistribution (2007) (Germany) (theatrical)
• Roadside Attractions (2007) (USA) (all media)
• Karma Films (2007) (Spain) (all media)
• Ascot Elite Entertainment Group (2007) (Switzerland) (all media)
• Ascot Elite Entertainment Group (2007) (Switzerland) (theatrical)
• Concorde Filmverleih (2007) (Germany) (theatrical)
• Dogwoof Pictures (2008) (UK) (theatrical)
• Filmladen (2007) (Austria) (all media)
• Homescreen (2008) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• Roadside Attractions (2007) (Canada) (theatrical)
• Roadside Attractions (2007) (USA) (theatrical)

Otras Compañías

• Atrix Films  world sales
• FilmFernsehFonds Bayern  funding
• Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA)  funding

También conocida como:

Wie man sein Leben kocht (Alemania)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.

Duración:

USA:94 min | Germany:100 min

País:

Alemania

Idioma:

Inglés | Alemán

Color:

Color

Relación de Aspecto:

1.85 : 1

Sonido:

Dolby SR

Clasificación:

Germany:o.Al. | USA:PG-13 | Netherlands:AL | Australia:M

Locaciones de Filmación:

San Francisco, California, USA

Compañía:

Megaherz TV Fernsehproduktion GmbH

When you wash the rice, wash the rice

Metaphors about food and its connection to life are common in our society; for example, "life is just a bowl of cherries", or "life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get". Yet most of us take food for granted, treating it as little more than a necessary means of survival, pausing only long enough to open a package or stop for fast food on the way home from work. The connection between our life and what we eat is the main theme of German director Dorris Dorrie's documentary How to Cook Your Life featuring Zen practitioner and acclaimed chef Edward Espe Brown. Brown has been a practicing Buddhist for over forty years and is the author of several books including "The Tassajara Bread Book", a main reference book for aspiring bread bakers.

Winner of the Audience Award at Sundance, Dorrie's film follows Brown to several Buddhist centers including Scheibbs in Austria, the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and the Zen Center in San Francisco as he promotes his ideas about our putting food into a larger context in our life. "When you're cooking you're not just cooking", he says, "not just working on food, you are also working on yourself, on other people." Brown was ordained as a Zen priest in 1971 by Suzuki Roshi and has held cooking classes in Buddhist centers throughout the world, teaching mindful awareness of food in our life. Roshi, author of the popular "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", is shown in original archive footage, "When you wash the rice", he once told Brown, "wash the rice, when you cut the carrots, cut the carrots, when you stir the soup, stir the soup." In other words, when you are involved with a task, be involved one hundred percent, stay in present time and silence the little voice in the back of your head.

Dorrie divides the film into sections: free your hands, fiasco, cutting through the confusion, anger, affluence, no preferences-no aversions, incomparable, imperfection and blemishes. She also visits an organic farm and a cookware store and shows how a woman creates her own meals by scavenging fruit from trees and leftovers from grocery stores. Brown aches for a return to a simpler life with more personal involvement with food. His emphasis is on the joy of using our hands in cooking and has nothing good to say about the packaged and processed foods that permeate our society. He talks with nostalgia about his memories of when his father baked his own bread. "Why are we eating like this? What went wrong? We're eating a puffy kind of chemically, not very tasty, papery-cardboard bread. We don't do things anymore because supposedly machines can do it better."

Brown has a strong point of view and has the ability to laugh at himself with a little chuckle like the Dalai Lama, though at times his personality can be somewhat irritating and I would have enjoyed hearing from more of the participants at the Centers. Dorrie does not set him up as a saint, however, showing his occasional lapses into anger and frustration and his tears when describing a dented teakettle and comparing it to the worn vessel of our own bodies. The message, however, comes through clearly. Brown says, "When we give away our capacity to do things with our hands, with our bodies, to use our hands to knead the bread, to make things, to touch things, to smell things, how are we going to feel alive?" I remembered this the next day when I made pancakes from scratch for the first time in many years. Not bad, either.