by Film: Recipes for Disaster
If you live in the Vancouver area, you will want to see this important film:
On April 16, view the third and final film of DOXA’s Documentary Film Series in the lead-up to our May festival. Recipes for Disaster follows a young Anglo-Finnish family as they rid themselves of all oil-based products for a year. The challenge proves to be more emotionally difficult than the family anticipates and John, father and instigator of the oil fast, must find a balance between living oil-free and keeping a functional family. For more information and to buy tickets, click here.
DOXA Documentary Film Series Screens Recipes for Disaster
Location: Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour St., Vancouver
Date & Time: Thursday, April 16th, 7pm
Filmmaker in attendance via Skype for Q&A after screening
Here is a short film clip.
This may sound familiar to some readers for I wrote about it over a year ago after seeing it on CBC. I recommend it highly!
In addition to the reviews in the DOXA link above, here is a review in The Tyee. The reviewer tends to focus most on the couple’s relationship issues and neglects thoughts about the wider environmental concerns. How do we manage and balance both?
April 14, 2009 in Canada and BC, Current Events, Environment, Films, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric by Marja-Leena
Looks like a great film and an almost impossible task!!
Joan, seems quite impossible indeed! I did read about one Finnish family living completely off the grid, living off the land somewhere in northern Finland, growing and preserving all their own food.
I’m getting ready to make the long plane trip to see my kids in Seattle. Even though we’ve gone solar, compost, hardly drive at all, etc. etc. this trip blows up our carbon footprint quite a bit.
Hattie, we’re the same as far as trying to see family far away, without wings of our own like the Canada geese. Oh, and going solar is still a costly dream in our local climate, and we haven’t been able to completely avoid plastic.
It is such a huge and complex problem, especially since we are human and what sets us apart is partly our ability to develop and benefit from science and technology. The fundamental problem I believe is that there are too many of us living for too long, and that the best we can aim for is to live frugally although comfortable, waste as little as possible, contribute to society as best we can, and to have as few children as possible so that the population diminishes dramatically. No matter what we try to do, if we do not achieve this last, we achieve nothing.
Olga, you are absolutely right! It’s not talked about enough for that’s a huge demand on resources like clean water and healthy food, never mind oil.
It’s a great film; I saw it on CBC last year, too. The one thing is I think he takes it a little far, by disposing of plastics that they’ve already purchased. I don’t mind not purchasing more, but that seems to just be fueling (pardon the pun) the consumerism further. Plus, I think his wife is a bit of a saint. It’s a wonderful doco, and brings up some really interesting points to think about.
Amie, I understand. He really wanted to see how they could live without any plastic in their life, even eliminating what they already had. Plus, so much of plastic is toxic for food storage and cooking. I no longer reheat food in those plastic food storage containers but still use them in the freezer, sigh, it’s tough to get rid of, isn’t it?