New to VOD this week:
BARBECUE
Director:
Matthew Salleh
Premiere:
SXSW 2017
Select Festivals:
Sydney
About:
Barbecue traditions around the world.
Salleh’s film profiles several locations and local customs around grilling meat on fire, including South Africa, Japan, Australia, Mongolia, Sweden, the Philippines, Uruguay, Armenia, Syria/Jordan refugee camps, Texas, Mexico, and New Zealand. Almost uniformly, participants note the importance of community, coming together, sharing stories as they share food, while also revealing some detail about their specific traditions, from Texan dry rub slow indirect cooked brisket to Swedes’ love of prepackaged picnic ready disposable personal grills. While well-shot, this hopelessly overscored project also is far too long and repetitive, having made its point about the commonality and sociability of the practice within its first few scenes, only to repeat them again and again at each new picturesque location.
what (not) to doc 