"Are you going eat that?" A more serious question than you might think, as explored in “Waste Not: Breaking Down the Food Equation,” a new documentary by the award-winning filmmakers of Pacific Lutheran Univesity’s MediaLab program. The movie will debut at 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8, at Broadway Center’s Theatre on the Square.
The free event will include a panel discussion, and we caught up with producers Taylor Lunka and Amanda Brasgalla, both senior communications students at PLU, to learn more.
Tacoma Weekly: So why this particular project?
Brasgalla: A U.N. report released in 2013 said that 1/3 of the food produced in the world goes to waste. So that kind of propelled us into the subject of “Why does 1/3 of the world’s food go to waste when so many go hungry?” So we started exploring the issue, looking into food recovery organizations, government associations and just people that are invested in the issue.
TW: When and where did you make the film people are going to see this weekend?
Brasgalla: We traveled around the United States and Canada, and a little bit in the U.K., during the month of June. Once we got back from that trip, we went into the lab and just started piecing the film together. Taylor and I have been on this project for about a year now.
TW: What about this topic really resonated with you?
Lunka: It’s just one of those things that can connect everyone, no matter where you are in the world. Food is so important to everything that we do every day. We meet for holidays. We meet friends for lunch. We set up meetings around food. Food is everything, when you think about it in a bigger picture.
TW: What is the No. 1 message you hope people take away when they see your film?
Lunka: The big takeaway we really want is just to educate people on food and the issue of wasted food. There are things that every single one of us can do as consumers of food. It’s not an issue we don’t have control over. Everyone can do something about this problem.
TW: Is the U.S. exceptional in the amount of food we waste?
Brasgalla: The U.S. wastes about 40 percent of the food that it produces. Europe only wastes about 30 percent. The thing is, food waste happens at different points in the chain depending on (whether it’s) western countries or eastern countries. For western countries, the majority of food is wasted on a consumer level. Then for non-western countries they’ve found that it’s mostly in production and distribution.
TW: What accounts for that difference?
Brasgalla: In western countries, a lot of times we’ll have ways of getting food to places and also refrigeration that aren’t always available in non-western countries. In western countries, you could attribute it to the fact that we have a lot of land. We have a lot of places that produce food, and it’s cheap. So, for us, food is less valuable.
TW: Will you be holding a discussion before or after the film?
Lunka: We’re gonna have an introduction. We’re gonna show the film, and after the film we have a panel of specialists that can answer any audience questions, and they’re gonna have some discussion questions of their own.
TW: Are you going to screen it any more locally? Are you looking for distribution? What’s the future for this film?
Brasgalla: We’ll submit our documentary to film festivals, both nationally and internationally. ... So we will go through the festival process, and at the end of that process we will have a university screening for PLU, possibly in the spring. Then some of the food recovery organizations want copies for their own personal showings.