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Saturday, 7 August 2010
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Festen (The Celebration)
(Denmark/Sweden, 1998, 105 mins.)

A darkly comic journey into forbidden family territory. No one can ignore a person like Danish patriarch Helge Klingenfeldt. So on his sixtieth birthday, a celebration is required. Friends and relatives scurry to the country estate. Eventually, every family's secrets will come out. And since his twin sister's death two months ago, prodigal son Christian is more haunted than usual. The time has come for the darkest family skeleton to be revealed, and it must be done in their father's style - with flair, and malice.

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Jamie's Great Italian Escape
(UK/Italy, 2005, 150 mins.)

Jamie Oliver heads to Italy in his camper van to regain his passion for cooking. Jamie maps out a journey to rediscover what inspired his love of food in the first place. He’s hoping that going back to basics, living off the land, meeting the locals and cooking up some traditional Italian food in his own style will be just what he needs. What will the Italians make of him, and can he and his food cut the "mostardo" in the Italian’s backyard?

From Sicily to Puglia to the mountain region of Le Marche, to the beautiful Amalfi Coast and lots of places in between, he packed in as much as he could and met so many friendly people - from lovely families who shared their recipes, to the market traders who gave him tips on how to cook their produce. Jamie’s journey takes him off the beaten track to discover people who make up the "real" Italy.

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Bella Martha (Mostly Martha)
(Germany/Italy/Austria/Switzerland, 2001, 109 mins.)

In a German restaurant, Chef Martha Klein is the undisputed supreme ruler of the kitchen staff and woe to any customer who would dare criticize her cooking. Her life is firmly centered around cooking which takes on a obsessive level with stubborn single mindedness. Even when she is ordered to take therapy, she still constantly talks about her work and the iron clad control she relishes in her task. All that changes when her sister dies in a car accident, leaving her 8 year old daughter, Lina. Martha takes her niece in and while making enquiries for her estranged father, she struggles to care for this stubbornly headstrong child. Meanwhile at work, a new chef named Mario is hired on and Martha feels threatened by this unorthodox intruder. The pressures of both her private and work life combine to create a situation that will fundamentally call her attitudes and life choices into question while these interlopers into her life begin to profoundly change it.

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Saturday, 7 August 2010
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Yin Shi Nan Nu (Eat Drink Man Woman)
(Taiwan/USA, 1994, 124 mins.)

This is not a movie to see on an empty stomach. Writer-director Ang Lee's 1994 Oscar nominee tells a family story about a chef and his three daughters through the meals the chef prepares and serves his family. This touching, dryly funny story of a family coping with personal lives and the way those lives intersect with the family relationships captures a shift in generations in Taipei. The father, a famous chef who has lost his taste buds, still cooks, though he draws no pleasure from eating. His daughters, meanwhile, deal with both the disappointments and surprises of daily living and the way their adult lives compare to the expectations the widowed father had for them. A subtle, amusing — and mouth-watering — comedy of impeccable manners.

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Jamie's Great Italian Escape
(UK/Italy, 2005, 150 mins.)

Jamie Oliver heads to Italy in his camper van to regain his passion for cooking. Jamie maps out a journey to rediscover what inspired his love of food in the first place. He’s hoping that going back to basics, living off the land, meeting the locals and cooking up some traditional Italian food in his own style will be just what he needs. What will the Italians make of him, and can he and his food cut the "mostardo" in the Italian’s backyard?

From Sicily to Puglia to the mountain region of Le Marche, to the beautiful Amalfi Coast and lots of places in between, he packed in as much as he could and met so many friendly people - from lovely families who shared their recipes, to the market traders who gave him tips on how to cook their produce. Jamie’s journey takes him off the beaten track to discover people who make up the "real" Italy.