Harvest | Alice Waters, David Tanis & Alex Weiser

good evening welcome to the Billy Wilder theater home of the public programs for the UCLA film and television archive my name is mayom haung and I am the director of the UCLA film and television archive welcome to food and [Applause] film before we begin as a l Grant institution the film and television AR private UCLA would like to acknowledge our presence on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Gabrielino and tongba peoples we are humbled to do work in this community and this work bringing film and conversation to the Wilder is only possible through the incredible work of many individuals and organizations that have helped make tonight's screening possible all of the archive screenings in the Wilder are free thanks to a gift from an anonymous donor and we're grateful for their support and this event would not have been possible without our partners in curation execution and presentation I'd like to give out a special thanks to our partners at the Hammer Museum of course including Claudia fer and Michael Harrison of course thanks to them I stand Here representing the archive but there are exceptional archive staff involved in this week against screenings including Paul Malcolm Amanda Salazar and Lauren Brown are Paul and Amanda in the theater hi here they are um Paul and Amanda have been you know incredible in working with uh Lulu and the hammer and putting this together and I just want to thank them for all their tremendous work please thank all of these amazing individuals and our supporters and give them a round of applause the food and film series started as an idea around a dinner table the passionate Alice Waters struck up a conversation with senior public programmer Paul Malcolm about film and how it is important to her life's work and so here we are months later a synergetic collaboration between the hammer Lulu and the archive celebrating the inaugural food and film program for what we hope is just the beginning of an ongoing series The Three films that are screening over the next two days are connected by the Land Community and people that come together under fig trees and on farms we hope that this communal experience of watching a film together paired with conversation can move us beyond the screen and continue dialogue outside of the cinema these conversations are in many ways in discourse with initiatives taking place here on campus at UCLA last year UCLA launched the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for food studies an interdisciplinary Institute devoted to research teaching and policy about food I am proud of the work taking place today in the theater and year round on campus to advance our understanding of the role of food in our lives so we are thrilled to open the evening with this conversation and inquiry into the connection to land our responsibility to it and our community and the ways in which food connects us following this conversation we will then screen Marcel pel's 1937 film Harvest and now I would like to let you know who will be joining us on stage for our panel so starting with our moderator Lori Ooa is general manager of food at the Los Angeles Times until last year she was the deputy editor of the entertainment art and arts at the times she won two James Beard awards for her food writing and the cookbook she co-wrote Nancy silverton's breads from the lier Bakery she was nominated for an iacp Julia Child cookbook award and a James Beard cookbook award David Tannis um has worked as a professional chef in his entire life he's collaborated with Alice Waters over four decades both at sha penise restaurant in brookley California and around the world he is the author of four acclaimed cookbooks and for the last 12 years he's written a syndicated column for the food section of the New York Times Tannis is the chef of Lulu Alex wiser has based his life around organic farming and sustainable AR uh agriculture for more than 40 years his family company wiser Family Farms has been in operation since 1977 and is one of the Legacy vendors of the Santa martica Farms Farmers Market one of the most influential farmers markets in the US and finally the co-curator of this series and a guest that might not need an introduction but I will offer one as we prepare for the conversation Alice Waters Alice Waters is a chef author food activist and founder of shapan restaurant in Berkeley California she's been a champion of local organic agriculture for over four decades in 1995 she founded the edible schoolyard project at Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr Middle School the program uses an organic garden and on-site kitchen classroom to teach all academic subjects the edible schoolyard project model has been replicated in over 6,000 schools around the world it's pretty [Applause] amazing in 2015 Alice was awarded the National Humanities medal by President Obama proving that eating is a political act in 2021 she was awarded the inaugural Carver Carson award for American innovation and Environmental Protection and agriculture from the Henry Ford Museum Alice is the author of 16 books including her latest we are what we eat a slow food Manifesto most recently UC Davis has asked atas Waters to create an Institute for regenerative agriculture and edible education at the AGI Square campus in downtown Sacramento The Institute will bring together food and agricultural leaders and innovators from around the world to address climate change and public health though the proc through the procurement of generative food in schools please join me in welcomeing this amazing panel to the stage to say um you know and share some words on on food and also film so welcome lauo choa Alice Waters David Tannis and Alex Weiser to the stage hello guys hello everyone uh you are very lucky because you have three fabulous people here to talk and thank you and and if and some of you I know uh had the dinner that David and I think Alice you probably had a hand in putting together inspired by this a wonderful menu thank you for that um I thought we should start though with um just kind of a Bine I know some of you must know uh P's Mar Trilogy um I think Harvest is a less less well-known um film of his um but I thought you know we should first talk of course sha panise your daughter Fanny Cesar um all kind of emerged out of the marsill trilogy and I think you know I was talking with um the chef m mura about how art kind of shaped his cooking but film seems to have shaped your restaurants so maybe you could first talk to us a little bit about why poo why panise Benny Etc well I was very lucky to meet Tom ly who started the tell ride Film Festival almost 50 years ago when I started Japanese and he was my best friend and very sadly he died in the fall of this year but I cannot tell you what he gave to me I I really can't because he not only brought people everyone he could imagine to shap Ben's for dinner but he he really made sure that I saw all the films that he thought were important around the world and so it was very early on when I was thinking about opening a restaurant that he took me to see the banel trilogy at the surf theater way out there in San Francisco Isco and we were probably two of about 20 people in that theater at that time and I just really resonated with with what was on the screen about people who lived in Marseilles and had was during the 30s when people were moving from the country to the city and he knew that they were leaving their values of the land and their connection to it behind and how were they going to live in the city together how were they going to keep that connection if they didn't have their place in nature and so I I don't know there was something so poignant about that and I uh I was just thinking about opening the restaurant and Tom of course was trying to influence me with the name of the restaurant and uh I thought well it could be Shea fenny and he said oh no it should be panise because pennies was the older man who when Fanny got pregnant with her love who went out to see that he was willing to marry her to keep her honor and Tom reminded me he was the only person in the film that made any money and maybe I should think about that you actually had a salad I remember that did not you didn't you have a salad that was you lost money on for years in years I'm sure I'm sure but I it's very important to me that you know I never started the restaurant because I wanted to make money that was sort of the last thing on my mind I wanted I wanted a place for my friends to eat and I wanted it in a house so they felt like they were coming for dinner at at home and so we only have had one menu and so that menu who had to be really good or they wouldn't come back and I can't believe that here we are 52 years later with one menu and and I have to say that that menu was good because we were buying food I was looking for taste I wasn't looking for organic farmers like yourself I was looking for the food that tasted like the food I had eaten in France in 1965 and it was when France was a slow Food Nation I always say that I was in Paris they didn't have any olive oil it was without butter olive oil was the south of France that was too far we only ate food within the North and that's really important to think about because it's here we are it's been only 60 or 70 years and we are importing food from irq around the world we are not eating the food that is local and ripe and taste Divine and I I wrote that book we are what we eat because I wanted to know how this changed our lives so profoundly that we've even lost our [Music] democracy and and so I really went into it deeply and I realized that we were not only eating fast food but we were eating the values that came with the fast food more is better time is money I want whatever I want whenever I want it and I don't care where it comes from I just want it and it's okay to eat in your car and everything should be fast cheap and easy and that is something that has never been true since the beginning of civilization we have always prioritized food and farming and family at the table always and all of a sudden it's unimportant and and David you you know cooked with Alice but then you also were lucky enough that you returned from France and came here to Los Angeles and I do I think that you know one of the most exciting things you do at Lulu are those menus I mean not everything is you have other things not every night is a is a single menu but can you talk a bit about the environment at shapen and what you took away and then if you had any connection to these films and yourself that's an easy one forgot about the mic that's an easy question thank you I don't know um um exactly but uh of course we share a lot of the same values as I we we're just kind of Sprout you know it's an offshoot of of shanes in so many ways um it's a different way to run a restaurant and it's a different way to approach menu making uh for me it's always been the most wonderful thing to be able to work with the farmer and see what was in the field and then make the menu based on that um that's always been my real Focus uh and now in LA pretty much at the farmers market three or four times a week and that those are the people we buy from the people that we know and the people who's that uh that the we know the quality um and there's that there's that human exchange um what was the question you get you're getting at it you're getting at it I noticed you put olive oil you had an olive oil cake which to Alice's point is more in the South so is that something you thought about oh yes of course I mean with with uh we were trying to sort of match up with the movie a bit and uh uh of course in the South it's olive oil and in fact ioli at one point was called Le de provance uh as uh the butter because they didn't use butter down there they only used olive oil and of course a lot of garlic and herbs and uh just all the fresh Mediterranean vegetables um it's a different kind of feel down there than it is like you know Paris and in the north uh and what was interesting watching this particular film this time I don't know whether I noticed it with so many of the other penol films but in this particular film they had the strongest provol accent you ever heard it's just like crazy is cool Al Alex do you um in in this film app plow figures in a very big way um I wonder I haven't seen the film yet so I'll see that um look forward to it and uh you know I do think you know there is this relationship um that I think started a lot with you Alice but then a lot of chefs who care about cooking I mean that kind of supports a different kind of farming that's not just the commercial things you have so many varieties of you know potatoes melons other things can you talk a bit about you know your relationship with chefs how that's changed over the years and you know what you see coming forward going forward with Alice talks about you know all of us yeah you I can't you know inal in California here I mean we can grow there's so many we can grow so many things and there for me as a grower there's always something new to grow and discover and ReDiscover uh so it's just never never ends the discovery and what and it there's so many uh we can grow year around here in California um there's so many different varietals I love working with breeders and and searching for flavor and taste and something that just separates one vegetable you know not every uh potato is the same there's different textures there's different applications uh so we try to we have that communication with the chefs and what what their goal is or what they're trying to make and sometimes I grow for what they're after and sometimes we're growing something that they just this is what you have this is what we'll make from it um so it's a two-way street sometimes I'm I'm following their lead sometimes they're following my lead and generally we just in Cal we just try to grow we can grow best for our property and for the time of year grow seasonal produce at its best and pick it right but wasn't it more difficult in the beginning to get people to be you know to support you know make money at this stuff oh oh yeah ve very difficult uh yeah that's my my dad's our success is our survival because when we first started farming and when I was joining it was my parents it was really my parents retirement farming my dad was a school teacher always wanted to be a farmer we're always looking at land and we're going to farm I was the youngest child so when we got into growing growing food um it was it was a very conventional World there was no it wasn't about flavor it was about pack you know pack out yield this is the time of year you want to have that crop out there was no farmers markets it was just about market and price flavor was not a option that was not even part of the equation what something tastes like it was just going after a commodity price but it was really because of the farmers markets and meeting the end user and meeting the chefs meeting the consumer who instead of complain you know you work with Brokers they're oh your apples are pink you're going to get a dollar less than app you know for these apples Washington's are red or just something always negative and and you were at the bottom of the food chain you get getting paid was another difficult thing so it's really the farmers markets that kept our family business alive and solve it and had created cash flow and then we got to learn and make and because farming you don't just start off growing something and become successful at it right away you'll make mistakes you have to think about the next year you know what I'm going to do differently next year so the farmers markets really give you the opportunity to do trial and air get the feedback from your customer and they the connection you have with with your customer so special go ahead Alan I see you wanted to well I just have to say because I'm so sure that we need to support the farmer completely without a middleman without a Cisco that that we have to uh connect directly and this happened ear on at shanes with our farmer and he happened to be a regenerative organic farmer Bob Canard way back and and well 45 years ago and he taught us so much we bought directly from him so we wanted to use everything he grew and he couldn't believe that he could be paid the real cost of what it was to farm and to take care of the farm work and so that because you I don't know whether you know but when Farmers grow food even for Whole Foods they have to sell it wholesale to Whole Foods who sells it then to all of us at retail price but when you buy directly at a farmer's market you're giving that person all the money but I'm really feeling like the school system could be that economic engine to buy food directly from the people who are growing it and raning and it's not only the only delicious solution for climate but it's the only way that we're going to support people like you to continue to find ver idols and and uh really think about what grows best when it gets hot and when it gets cold and uh we need that relationship I mean we couldn't cook if the farmer wasn't providing the food that is picked ripe you cannot have food from other countries shipped in because