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What happens to a vegetarian who moves to the Alaskan Frontier?

Eating Alaska is a serious and humorous film about connecting to where you live and eating locally. Made by a former city dweller now living on an island in Alaska and married to fisherman, deer hunter and environmental activist, it is a journey into food politics, regional food traditions, our connection to the wilderness and to what we put into our mouths.

In this quest for the “right thing” to eat, the filmmaker stops by a famer's market in the lower 48 stocked with fresh local fruits and vegetables and then heads back to Alaska, climbing mountains and walking into the tundra with women hunters, fishing for wild salmon and communing with vegans in Wasilla. She also travels to Kotzebue and talks with  Inupiat teens in home economics class making pretzels while they talk about their favorite traditional foods from moose meat to whale blubber.

The postcard like scenery in Alaska may be a contrast to what most urban residents see everyday and the filmmaker may have gone into the wild, but she also finds farmed salmon, toxics getting into wild foods and the colonization of the indigenous diet.

Eating Alaska doesn't preach or give answers, but points out dilemmas in a style that provokes both laughter and serious discussion.

What is the ethical way to eat in Alaska-or anywhere?

Is it better to shoot a deer than buy tofu that has been shipped thousands of miles?

Where is your comfort level in taking a life for food?

This wry personal look at what's on your plate explores ideas about eating healthy, safe and sustainable food from one's own backyard, either urban or wild, versus industrially produced food shipped thousands of miles.

 

"Eating Alaska makes us ruminate, laugh and stand in awe, all at the same time."
Gary Nabhan,
Author, Where Our Food Comes From and Coming Home to Eat

"A quirky look at our food system and a delightful examination of food choices in America's frontier where traditional foodways sometimes but not always, gives way to supermarket junk food."
Marion Nestle.
Professor, Nutrition, Food Studies, Public Health & Sociology, New York University.

"This film asks all the right questions and urges us to find our own answers. A useful and heartful tool for talking about food justice and food systems and to help all of us to create a new story about food."
Peter Forbes
Co-founder and Executive Director, Center for Whole Communities

Engaging, clever, thoughtful, insightful, with the perfect balance between humor and seriousness.
Richard K. Nelson.
Anthropologist, Author, Island Within and Make Prayers to the Raven

"Take out or eat in?" has a whole new meaning when it's "in Alaska" we're talking about. Ellen Frankenstein brews irreverent wit and genuine concern into an irresistible stew."
Bill Nichols
Professor of Cinema, San Francisco State University

More Reviews

AWARDS & SCREENINGS:

• Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival, Nevada City, CA

   

• Univ. of California, California State University, and California Community College Sustainability Conference

• Food for Thought Film Festival, New York City

• Alaska Public Health Summit

• Community Food Security National Conference

• Mendocino Film Festival, Mendocino, CA

• Tucson Slow Food & Film Festival, Tucson AZ

• Anchorage International Film Festival

• Haida Gwaii Film Festival, British Columbia

• Alaska Dietetics Association

• Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, Sonoma, CA

Resources to Download

Eating Alaska: A Guide for Discussion and Use