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Forbes
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
New Documentary Features Marcella Hazan, Godmother Of Italian Cooking
The main reason to watch Marcella, a new documentary about Marcella Hazan, the late Italian cook and teacher Julia Child once described as 'my mentor in all things Italian,' may well be because we're all craving the kind of lifestyle that still oozes from her beloved, bestselling cookbooks. Italian cook Marcella Hazan in her Venice kitchen. She never needed to taste, sniffing was enough. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment In the introduction to The Classic Italian Cookbook, first published in 1973, she describes the Italian art of eating as the way to make 'art out of life,' and then goes on to clarify that for millions of hungry Italians, the best possible food is cooked at home, not in restaurants. Marcella grew up in a fishing town on the Italian Adriatic Coast, 65 miles or so from Bologna, and when she moved to New York City in the 1950s with her new Italian-American husband, Victor Hazan, she had never really cooked. A scientist at heart, she'd gotten two PhDs, one in biology, the other in natural sciences and had become a teacher. In New York, Victor worked with his father but when he came home at lunchtime, he was hungry. Marcella Hazan and Victor Hazan who would end up transcribing and writing her cookbooks. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment Even though Marcella had limited use of her right arm, the result of an injury sustained on a beach when she was six, she taught herself how to cook with what she found in their Queens neighborhood. Soon, she travelled to Manhattan's Ninth Avenue seeking fresh mozzarella, Italian ham and eggplants. Suddenly, she was experimenting in the kitchen and the rest is history. The film, written and directed by Emmy and Peabody Award-winner Peter Miller and released by Greenwich Entertainment, features interviews of Victor Hazan, who would become Marcella's writing partner, and their son, Giuliano Hazan, a chef, teacher and author in his own right. Other celebrity friends recount the impact she had on their lives and include restaurateur Danny Meyer, former Town & Country editor Pamela Fiori, and Saveur co-founder and editor Dorothy Kalins. 'My wife and I had been cooking from her books since the 1980s,' said Miller. 'And one night we wondered, 'Has anybody made a documentary on Marcella?'' Without resources, it would take six years and 371 people through a crowd-funding campaign to get the film made. Through clips drawn from home movies, we follow Marcella as she teaches a class, fries a fish, or shows off the cornucopia of produce at the Rialto market in Venice. Here and there, her raspy voice (she started smoking at 14 and never quit) paired with her killer smile, and the sharp intelligence that sparkles in her eyes, all create the illusion that she's still with us, sniffing the pot ⸺ she never needed to taste, smelling was enough ⸺ and guiding us towards deliciousness. Marcella Hazan at the supermarket Marcella Hazan and Victor Hazan who would end up transcribing and writing her cookbooks. Watching Marcella, we crave to spend some time (a year, perhaps?) living in Venice and shopping at the Rialto. We would happily follow her at the market in Milan or Rome, where the couple lived for a while. The sentence she used often, 'Italian food is simple but it is not easy,' resonates. Perhaps most vividly, we watch Chef April Bloomfield, who now cooks at Sailor in Brooklyn, brown a sizzling veal shank with Marcella. It involves anchovies, onions, garlic, and white wine. 'How much white wine, Marcella?' 'Keep going,' she answers. She was 90 at that point, but keep going, she did, until 2013. Today, food lovers throughout the country may remember her for her 'greatest hits,' her fabulous pared-down tomato sauce, the chicken with two lemons so simple and good Glamour magazine called it 'engagement chicken,' because it often preceded a marriage proposal, her braised artichoke with mortadella stuffing. How timely it is, when so many of us are craving authenticity and comfort, that this film can now be screened in cinemas around the country and on your favorite platforms. Thank you Peter, and thank you Marcella!
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Head on Power of Art to ‘Preserve Reality' With Truth, Democracy Under Threat
As the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival prepares to host its 27th edition, which runs March 6 – 16, festival director Orestis Andreadakis sees no shortage of threats to truth, freedom and the values on which the democratic order is based. 'Four months have passed since the [Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival], but it seems like we're already living in a completely different world — unfortunately, not a better one,' Andreadakis tells Variety. Likening the times to 'a historical documentary about the 1930s, screened backwards,' he describes world events as 'an educational documentary that taught us nothing. It is a testimony for the horror of fascism and totalitarianism that it seems we have forgotten,' he continues. 'It is a film record of a horrific historical reality that some are trying to repeat in the worst possible way.' More from Variety 'We Live Here,' About a Former Soviet Nuclear Test Site, Boarded by Syndicado Ahead of CPH:DOX Premiere (EXCLUSIVE) 'Adobe of Down,' About a Religious Community in Siberia, Picked Up by Taskovski Ahead of CPH:DOX Premiere (EXCLUSIVE) Greenwich Entertainment Acquires Peter Miller's 'Marcella,' Sets May Theatrical Release (EXCLUSIVE) This year's festival begins hardly a fortnight after Russia's war in Ukraine marked its three-year anniversary, and as a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza seeking to put an end to that bloody conflict appears in jeopardy. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on personal liberties and political norms in his first six weeks in office. Meanwhile, Europe's continued rightward turn was solidified by recent elections in Germany, where the far-right AfD party secured 20% of the popular vote. While widespread unrest and uncertainty could make the very notion of a documentary film festival seem quaint, however, Andreadakis insists such events underscore the importance of art as a 'bulwark' against the assaults on our fundamental principles 'as the value of truth is in danger of becoming irrelevant.' 'The art of documentary tries to preserve reality. This is the most important thing in our difficult times. To realize what is truth, what is reality,' he says. The films screening at this year's Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 'portray and unveil what we experience in our precarious times.' The festival kicks off March 6 with 'About a Hero' (pictured), director Piotr Winiewicz's AI-assisted documentary that takes aim at German auteur Werner Herzog — who has been loudly dismissive of artificial intelligence — by creating an artificial version of a Herzog film. The closing film, Shoshannah Stern's 'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,' which arrives fresh off a well-received Sundance premiere, tells the story of the titular, trailblazing actor who in 1986 became the first deaf person to win an Oscar. Across the festival's three main competition sections and diverse programming strands, a total of 261 documentaries will be screened, including 72 world, 40 international and 11 European premieres. Among them are 71 feature and short films from the host nation, reflecting Andreadakis and the programming team's commitment to the Thessaloniki Doc Fest as a 'showcase of the Greek industry.' Highlights from the international competition, which sees 10 films vying for the Golden Alexander, include a trio of documentaries coming off Sundance premieres — 'Coexistence, My Ass!,' Amber Fares' portrait of Israeli activist and comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi; Jesse Short Bull and David France's 'Free Leonard Peltier,' about the Native American activist who spent nearly half a century in prison; and Gianluca Matarrese's 'GEN_,' about an unconventional doctor at a fertility clinic in Milan — as well as Juanjo Pereira's 'Under the Flags, the Sun,' which follows the discovery of an audiovisual archive documenting Paraguay's 35-year dictatorship, which debuted at the Berlin Film Festival. World premieres in the main competition include 'Sculpted Souls,' the latest documentary from veteran Greek filmmaker Stavros Psillakis, which follows a Swiss dentist who's spent nearly three decades treating lepers in Greece for free, and 'Child of Dust,' by Polish filmmaker Weronika Mliczewska, about the child of an American soldier left behind during the Vietnam War who seeks to reconnect with his father in the U.S. Other festival highlights include a screening of Steve Pink's 'The Last Republican,' which follows the efforts of former Republican politician Adam Kinzinger to bring Donald Trump to justice after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, as well as a sidebar dedicated to the rise of artificial intelligence which includes a screening of Tilda Swinton's directorial debut, 'The Hexagonal Hive and a Mouse in a Maze.' An honorary Golden Alexander will be awarded to French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, who will deliver a masterclass on March 8, and whose prolific career will be celebrated with a screening of films including BAFTA nominee 'To Be and To Have' and Berlin Golden Bear winner 'On the Adamant.' American documentary filmmaker and multi-hyphenate artist Lauren Greenfield will also be honored with a tribute to her award-winning body of work that includes Sundance prizewinner 'The Queen of Versailles' and her most recent project, the documentary series 'Social Studies.' Greenfield will deliver a masterclass on March 13. The festival's 27th edition begins just days removed from massive protests on the two-year anniversary of the Tempe railway disaster that claimed 57 lives, with hundreds of thousands of Greeks taking to the streets in what have been described as the country's largest protests since the fall of the military junta in 1974. The Tempe tragedy, which took place on the eve of the festival's 25th edition, prompted the organizers to cancel that year's opening ceremony amid an unprecedented national outpouring of anger and grief. Two years later, with memories of that tragic day still fresh, more protests are planned in Thessaloniki and across Greece, as the country seeks justice for the tragic loss of so many lives. Against that backdrop, this year's festival hopes to accomplish what so many documentary filmmakers set out to achieve: to bear witness, spark debate, speak truth to power, and provide some measure of comfort and community in tumultuous times. 'Thessaloniki is a city that carries memory and history. It's a place that knows about geopolitical tensions, and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival has always been a place of dialogue, of freedom, of culture,' says Andreadakis. 'This is the most important thing. Because art is one of the most powerful weapons of democracy.' The Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival runs March 6 – 16. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Oscars 2026: First Blind Predictions Including Timothée Chalamet, Emma Stone, 'Wicked: For Good' and More What's Coming to Disney+ in March 2025
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘We Live Here,' About a Former Soviet Nuclear Test Site, Boarded by Syndicado Ahead of CPH:DOX Premiere (EXCLUSIVE)
Sales agent Syndicado has boarded Zhanana Kurmasheva's feature doc debut 'We Live Here,' ahead of its world premiere at CPH:DOX, where it will compete for the DOX:AWARD. 'We Live Here' follows three generations in the desolate Kazakh steppe, once a Soviet nuclear test site, as they confront the place's haunting legacy. More from Variety 'Adobe of Down,' About a Religious Community in Siberia, Picked Up by Taskovski Ahead of CPH:DOX Premiere (EXCLUSIVE) Greenwich Entertainment Acquires Peter Miller's 'Marcella,' Sets May Theatrical Release (EXCLUSIVE) Documentary About Flaco, Owl Who Escaped Central Park Zoo, in Production at HBO Between 1949 and 1991, 456 nuclear tests left a legacy of radioactive contamination and suffering. As ecologists map uninhabitable areas, a nearby family struggles with the echoes of the past. Convinced their daughter's illness stems from radiation, they seek proof while she feels torn between love for her homeland and the sense of looming danger it still holds. Kurmasheva explains: 'My connection to this story is personal. My mother, born near the village of Kainar where nuclear tests left their mark, would warn me: 'Don't tell anyone where I'm from. Especially not any future suitors. People think we're sick.' This stigma follows the people of Semipalatinsk wherever they go. To this day, locals speak of the shame and fear tied to their origins. The world sees them as damaged, marked by the radiation that still haunts their homeland.' She adds: 'This film is about resilience: of the land and of the people. Their lives intertwine with the steppe in ways that are deeply human. Together, they navigate the aftermath of destruction, clinging to hope and dignity despite the scars they carry.' Kurmasheva participated in a number of international workshops and training programs, such as the East-West Talent Lab at goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film in 2022. She is the laureate of the 2011 Kulaguer Award for her student documentary 'I Am 20 Years Old!' Her short documentary 'Zhenya' (2013) was showcased at film festivals in Moscow, New York, Yerevan, Sevastopol and Almaty. 'We Live Here' is produced by Banu Ramazanova. The film was supported by Kazakh Cinema: State Center for Support of National Cinema, the EFM Doc Toolbox program, Eurasia Doc (Doc Monde) Script Development Residency, Alternativa Development Lab, GZDOC (Top 10 Documentary Projects), and Tokyo Docs, where it won Best Pitch. Best of Variety What's Coming to Disney+ in March 2025 What's Coming to Netflix in March 2025 New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week
