“Slow Food Story” is an italian documentary presented at the last Berlinale 2013.

It is the story of a revolution. A slow revolution, a revolution at a snail’s pace. One that’s been going on now for 25 years and still shows no signs of coming to a stop. Its leader is Carlo Petrini, better known as “Carlìn”. He’s the man who invented Slow Food and Terra Madre. In 1986 Carlìn founded the ArciGola gastronomic association in Italy and, three years later in Paris, launched Slow Food, an international anti-fast food resistance movement. Without ever leaving his native Bra, a small town of 27,000 inhabitants, he has created a movement that now spans 150 countries and has transformed gastronomy forever.

http://www.mediafire.com/watch/dq7o3rdz38l321d/clip2.mp4

“Slow Food Story” tells the tale of a group of friends in the provinces. It’s a story of pranks and political passions, of restaurants and rediscovered peasant rites, of wine and journeys and gambles, some won and some lost but all taken with the same unsinkable, grouchy irony. The film shows how even the most important cultural adventures can be born of a tongue-in-cheek approach to life.

http://www.mediafire.com/watch/u28g1s7m769c9pd/trl_Slow_Food_DEF.mp4

“I didn’t want to photograph the Slow Food phenomenon as it is today. I wanted to tell a story … the Slow Food Story. First of all, because it happens to be the story of my home town, Bra, as I know it. As a kid in the 1970s, then growing up. Secondly, because the history of Slow Food is a family history insofar as other Sardos besides myself have worked and work for the Slow Food snail. I knew I could tell the story from the inside, without neglecting details that might have seemed secondary to others and overcoming the reticence typical of provincial Piedmont. Hence my collection of the testimonies of old friends of Petrini’s who shared previous experiences at Slow Food with him, following the same direction from politics to food, then back to politics through food. Their voices can be heard in the documentary and old photographs seen wherever no archive footage was available. Subsequently, as Slow Food gradually asserted itself the archive footage went from rich to very rich and we were able to draw on what we regarded as the most effective material, always giving priority to our original filming. It was clear to me that telling the story about Slow Food I was supposed to tell the story of Carlo Petrini: in which no distance exists between private and public. Slow Food is all his life. Our film is the biography of a revolutionary leader, totally given over to his cause, to the detriment of his own personal privacy and his health. But unlike others, his revolution, based on the “right to pleasure”, is non-violent. Petrini was the first to grasp the fact that one of the decisive encounters of our time was being played in the field of food, and he kept hammering away at it until people started hearing the echoes of all his hammering. I have enjoyed telling the story because it shows how even the most important and serious cultural adventures can spring from a wry, tongue-in-cheek, pleasure-loving approach to existence, how you don’t have to be solemn to be serious. Which is why I have tried to make the film lively and informal, never over-aloof. Hence the pace of the editing, the use of material of diverse quality and provenance (photos, archive footage, animation), the atmosphere of the original music and the choice of narrator, Petrini’s best friend Azio Citi, a little man with a huge personality. I hope the film captures some of the unrefined, intellectually contagious impetuousness of Carlìn’s thought. And that, in the background, it gives the spectator a glimpse of the “big picture” of world food, namely the global dynamics of agribusiness and the most burning gastronomic issues in the sixty years covered by the time frame of the story. Partly thanks to Slow Food, food has become one of the key themes of global politics. Not only in the paternalistic sense of the richest feeding the poorest, but also as the focus of cultural debate, political encounter, Weltanschauung and environmental vision. How this has happened is, at a deeper, less explicit level, the subject of this modest film of mine.”

​ Stefano Sardo, director

director Stefano Sardo

subject Stefano Sardo

editor Stefano Cravero

photography Giovanni Giommi

music Valerio Vigliar

Research and documentation Séverine Petit

Production delegate Lara Lucchetta

Executive producer Ines Vasiljevic

Coproduction by Sarah Pennacchi

Produced by Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima, Carlotta Calori

Produced by Indigo Film, Tico Film

In association with Element Pictures

With the contribution of Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities

With the support of the Piemonte Doc Film Fund

A regional documentary fund With the support of MEDIA Programme of the European Union