Saturday, April 29, 2006

My SIFF ends with Chinese Restaurants: Beyond Frontier. I had heard good things about his previous works of the same series, so I thought I should watch. Anyway, I love programmes about food and travel together. Check Anthony Bourdain. This is apparently a popular and critically acclaimed documentary series that looks at the history of Chinese migration around the world through the stories of local Chinese restaurant owners. The director went to Brazil, to West India, and the Himalayas, to meet several Chinese restaurant proprietiers, who risked it all to leave their homelands, travel far and wide, into the deep unknown. They worked odd jobs, before stumbling inot the food industry, seeing that selling food is a very hard, but pretty stable form of employment. The director probed these men about their journey to today's success, how they feel about integrating Chinese food into their community, what they feel about staying in the local community, and very importantly, whether they still feel that they are Chinese. The film is about adapting to a new lifestyle, which was what our forefathers did when they travel out of China to settle in these shores. An excellent documentary indeed.

♥ 8:30 pm