National Film Board of Canada Food Documentaries: A Synthetic Approach, Part I

 

Nostalgic reminiscences serve a central role in a series of National Film Board of Canada documentaries. Beef, Inc., Bacon: The Film, and Animals all focus on the meat industry and its negative consequences, sometimes by connecting the negative environmental consequences of animal fecal matter and governmental policy.

These three films draw on nostalgia to emphasize the dangers of industrializing meat production, but they also individualize the animals being prepared for slaughter, applying an animal rights argument that constructs beef, hogs, and other food source animals as sentient. To make their arguments, all three films take a synthetic approach to documentary that pursues interviews, portraits, and nature documentary approaches.

Carmen Garcia’s Beef, Inc. and Hugo Latulippe’s Bacon: The Film both rely on tropes of unveiling and talking head interviews to demonstrate problems with fecal waste and slaughtering practices. Although the filmmakers for Beef, Inc. did not have access to the slaughterhouses, the absence of visuals and critical commentary on blood and flesh may move beyond shielding the self from the source of the foods we eat to the shock of absence of the pastoral cattle image from the process.

Latulippe's Bacon: The Film concentrates on the negative effects Quebec hog farming is having on air and water toxicity levels. To highlight a nostalgia for both a more animal and earth-friendly approach to hog farming, the film individualizes the hogs on this industrial farm through broad-based portraits, visuals of artificial insemination and separation from the mother, moving us toward what look like more ethical approaches to feeding our craving for meat.