Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, December 1: NATURAL RESISTANCE
Jonathan Nossiter’s look at artisanal Italian vintners struggling against conformity bowed at Berlin last year. The film also screened at Toronto, CPH:DOX, BAFICI, Athens, Docs Against Gravity, Montreal, Beirut, Rio, Seattle, Miami, and Santa Barbara, among others.
A companion piece to Nossiter’s better-known MONDOVINO, his new film is less sprawling, focused on four winemakers in two Italian regions, but covers similar general terrain as the earlier film: the impact of globalization and corporate culture on the craft of wine production. Here, the concerns are stated primarily in local terms, as so-called “natural” winemakers rail against the bureaucracy of “quality control” boards which demand a stifling uniformity to the vintages they’ll accept, ignoring the realities of weather, region, and environment and their impact on production. Couching this in a paradigm of economic control which has seen the European Union discourage farming in favor of urban development, these impassioned artisanal creators rightfully feel imperiled. Nossiter, however, employs an ambling, and at time rambling, approach – what the various clips from random classic films inserted here have to do with winemaking is a headscratcher, for example. Ultimately, this is a pleasant enough diversion, but not quite as effective as a call to action, if, in fact that is its intent.
what (not) to doc 