Peace,
love and 'Barbecue,' a global film ode to grilled meat
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[March 14, 2017]
By Jon Herskovitz
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) -
The primal confluence of food, flames and family simmers
in high definition in "Barbecue," a globe-trotting new
documentary and cinematic love letter to cooking meat
over an open fire.
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The feature-length movie filmed in 12 countries had its
global premiere at the South by Southwest film festival in
Austin, Texas, not far from some of the barbecue joints that
inspired Australian filmmaker Matthew Salleh and his partner
Rose Tucker to explore the globe's shared barbecue culture.
"Barbecue is this perfect combination of tradition, community
and culture," Salleh said in a weekend interview shortly after
the film's debut.
"We just started talking to people and everyone was passionate
about their country’s version of barbecue," Salleh said over a
plate of barbecued brisket, beef rib and sausage in Austin.
"In the six or seven months that we researched it, we were
pitched by people who said 'you have got to come to my
country,'" he said, adding they are shopping for a distributor
for the film.
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He and Tucker went on a 200-day shoot that took them from Sweden
to Uruguay, with stops including Armenia, Mongolia, Japan and a
refugee camp on the Syria-Jordan border.
While the barbecue craft varied from the hot stones used to cook
marmot in Mongolia to the pit used to grill goat in Mexico, the
message in each trip was the same. Communities and families came
together around the food.
"We have vegetarians who have seen the film and you cannot deny
the cultural significance in the world of eating meat over the
fire," Salleh said.
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The film starts in South Africa, where racial divides of apartheid
still scar the country, and shows the separate and similar barbecue
tradition among blacks and whites. It includes Philippines family
gatherings around roast pig and exiled Syrians trying to recapture a
bit of home at a shawarma shop in a refugee camp.
After their trek, Salleh and Tucker says they have received gentle
ribbing from people asking why their country's barbecue did not make
the cut and a persistent question of what barbecue was best.
"At this point we begin the politically correct process of saying
how we loved them all," Salleh said. Tucker added the answer can be
more about the experience, then the taste.
"We had some of the best experiences in Armenia where you drink
vodka with the first bite of meat," she said.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Richard Chang)
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