V4filmfeszt: Cooking History

Director: Péter Kerekes

Who would have imagined that wars could also be fought with pots, pans, and pepper shakers? In contrast with classic documantations recalling war memories with Talking Heads, the Slovakian film director focuses on a particular aspect: the sensual element of war. Military chefs have a unique, and until now, unshared influence on the battlefield. “A hungry soldier doesn’t feel safe,” explains a sausage-wielding army cook. Feeding troops is a tactical strategy used to truly astounding results in major European conflicts of the 20th century. A Russian woman’s meat blintzes provide 11 million soldiers the necessary courage to conquer in the Second World War. A Jewish prison camp breadmaker executes a plan against his Nazi captors with the only tools at his disposal. Tito’s personal chef shares the state dinner menus whose warring national cuisines foretell the Balkan War itself. By turns wry and rousing, the personal stories of history’s forgotten witnesses quietly humanize war’s unrecorded battles and their costs. Six wars, 10 recipes, and 60,361,024 dead – Cooking History is a fascinating retelling of the past.

The director uses various stylistic devices to stage a modern soldiers‘ tale: wicked, winking and macabre.

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