Coming to PBS’ Independent Lens next Monday, January 14: SOUL FOOD JUNKIES
Byron Hurt’s exploration of the impact of soul food on African American health made its premiere at the American Black Film Festival in Miami this past Summer, where it picked up the best documentary award. It received similar recognition at Urbanworld in the Fall, and has also screened at Reel Sisters as well as several community screenings. Beyond the broadcast, ITVS is also screening the doc in more than a hundred cities nationwide as part of its Community Cinema engagement program.
Concern about his father’s eating habits inspired Hurt to investigate African Americans’ diets, focusing on the history and culture around soul food, and how it has contributed to health problems like obesity and diabetes. Though himself a vegetarian, Hurt travels around the country to learn more about African American food traditions and how they came to be, often as a legacy of slavery and segregation. This yields interesting findings, such as the existence of a regular guidebook black travelers used in the past to find safe places to eat on the road, or the corresponding development of the custom of packing meals during travel because of this difficulty, as well as the transformation of Southern cooking into what’s now known as soul food. Covering not only the more indulgent aspects of the cuisine that have been linked to numerous health issues, but also the problem of food deserts in lower income communities, Hurt offers an eye-opening look at black communities’ relationship to food, and the possibility of more healthy alternatives.
Curious about the phenomenon of retirement in America, and noting the erosion of a sense of traditional familial responsibility for caring our elders, filmmaker Davey Field examines the resultant development of manufactured senior communities organized around specific interests tied to various ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, vocational, or identity-based factors. Often organized collectively, the residents take an active role in constructing their own chosen substitute families, and, importantly, setting the terms for the way their later years, and eventual deaths, play out. Continue reading 
what (not) to doc 