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KITCHEN STORIES/ FOOD FILMS/
FILM
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Dir: Bent Hamer/
Written by: Bent Hamer, Jörgen Bergmark/ With: Bjørn Floberg,
Joachim Calmeyer, Tomas Norströ/ Norway, Sweden/ 2003/ 95 mins/
ICA Projects
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Did you know that on average a 1950s
Swedish housewife walked the equivalent distance from Sweden to
Congo each year whilst carrying out her kitchen chores, and that
by simply organising herself along assembly line principles she
could significantly reduce this amount? This kind of clinical
rationalisation, which is gently lampooned in Kitchen
Stories, was typical of post-war organisations which looked
to science as the solution to everything. Set in 50s Norway,
Kitchen Stories sees a fleet of observers from the Swedish
Home Research Institute descend on the rural enclave of Landstad
to observe the kitchen routines of single men, whose habits
apparently yield vital information on how best to calibrate
inefficiency in the home. Thus the scene is set for the humorous
interplay between one uptight observer and his more rustic
subject. Director Hamer is a confident comedian, and his visual
humour carries this curious story along. Part satire on social
control and part humorous fable about friendship, Kitchen
Stories also offers a distinctly absurdist vision of the
aesthetics and ideologies of the time. If one colour were to
evoke the 50s it would be that kind of optimistic yet strangely
clinical green, so prevalent in civic crockery and domestic
bathrooms. And of course, this is the hue of the somehow
otherworldly egg-shaped caravans which descend on Landstad.
From the London
International Film Festival programme / Sarah Lutton
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