ILLUMINATE. CHALLENGE. INSPIRE.
A wry search for the "right thing" to eat
Watch TrailerWhat 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 with women hunters, fishing for wild salmon and communing with vegans. She visits a grocery store with kids to study labels and heads to the Arctic to talk with Inupiat teens in a home economics class, making pretzels while they describe 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 discussion on questions such as:
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 is also a thought-provoking resource for discussing our assumptions about gendered behavior and women's relationship to the natural world.
Recommended by educators as a teaching resource for courses in:
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
Food is the first place we're remaking our world, and Alaska is a wonderfully funny and varied case in point. You'll see people imagining, one meal at a time, what a more durable world might look like."
Bill McKibben, Author of Eaarth and Deep Economy
PBS Broadcast
Community Food Security National Conference
American Sociology Meetings
Univ. of California, California State University, and California Community College Sustainability Conference
Alaska Public Health Summit, Award for contribution to public health in Alaska
American Public Health Annual Meetings
Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival, Nevada City, CA
Mendocino Film Festival, Mendocino, CA
Food for Thought Film Festival, New York City
Tucson Slow Food & Film Festival, Tucson AZ
Anchorage International Film Festival
Haida Gwaii Film Festival, British Columbia
Society for Social Problems Conference
International Slow Food & Environment Events in Warsaw, Croatia & Scotland
Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, Sonoma, CA
This 44-page updated guide features sections to support use of Eating Alaska by both educators in schools and universities and community facilitators/organizers.
The guide includes ideas for setting up community events, activities to do with students and resources for kids and adults. From mapping with teens to creating a local foods potluck and provoking discussion and action on how we can make our homes, workplaces, campuses and communities healthier and more sustainable, we welcome active and creative uses of this documentary.
We welcome feedback and will update the guide periodically to include new ideas and resources. Contact us at info@eatingalaska.com.
Visit the official website for Eating Alaska
Appropriate for: Middle School High School College/University
Special Features:
Final edition released! Includes close captioning and audio description, chapters and extras, plus a short version useful for workshops and classrooms. Also, check out our downloadable curriculum guide.
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