Food and Film: Always for Pleasure / Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of the Cajun and Creole Cooking of Louisiana
Co-presented with the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
In-person: Q&A with chef and restaurateur Alice Waters, moderated by former Variety film critic Scott Foundas.
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, who will be in-person for the screening, 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.
Always for Pleasure (1978)
On the streets and porches, in the living rooms and the kitchens of New Orleans, documentarian Les Blank observes an American city like no other. As one of his subjects puts it, “It’s the last place in America that you feel just sort of free to live.” A graduate of Tulane University, Blank acknowledges the complexity of the city’s history in that regard which deepens its scenes of jubilant celebrations brimming with life, from St. Patrick’s Day to Mardi Gras where red beans and rice and Cajun seasoned crawdads are consumed with copious amounts of beer.
Director: Les Blank.
Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of the Cajun and Creole Cooking of Louisiana (1990)
As Margaret Chenier, wife of zydeco master Clifton Chenier, slices fresh garlic in her Louisiana backyard, documentarian Les Blank asks her off-screen, “You don’t use garlic powder?” Without missing a slice she recalls her mother’s cooking and rejects the idea full stop: “There’s a lot of new stuff coming out but … we use that real good stuff.” Blank’s intimate deep dive into the techniques of Cajun and Creole chefs is all about the real good stuff they put into the preparation of catfish, crawfish, okara, chicken sauce piquante, candied yams, beef tongue and more. A mouth-watering melding of music, food and tradition, Yum Yum Yum delivers exactly what its title evokes.
DCP. Director: Les Blank.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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