Imaginary Feasts

Directed by Anne Georget

70 minutes / Color
English; French / English subtitles
Release: 2017
Copyright: 2014

film poster

On the same DVD as MINA'S RECIPE BOOK!

Available on DVD for the first time, IMAGINARY FEASTS and MINA'S RECIPE BOOK tell little-known, but fascinating stories of imagination and resilience in the face of the worst kind of deprivation

IMAGINARY FEASTS explores how in Nazi concentration cmaps, Soviet Gulags and Japanese prison camps, starving prisoners shared and recorded favorite meals and recipes. By examing how these objects of survival, the film shows quiet acts of incredible resistance.

The film is a testament to the strength of women and men who, even in the most dire circumstances, created a unique form of resistance.

Read "Hell's Own Cookbook," a New York Times article about the book that inspired the films here.

"Explores notebooks filled with fantasy recipes that prisoners left behind under unimaginable circumstances as proof of a remarkable kind of quiet resistance… IMAGINARY FEASTS turns the camera on writers, philosophers, cooks, psychiatrists, historians, language specialists and neurologists to explain a baffling yet apparently widespread occurrence." Agence France Presse

"The recipes were written from memory…bear in mind that these are not the cookies the prisoners ate in the camps-but the ones they remembered and dreamed of eating."National Post

“A disturbing documentary… tackles the world of concentration camps (in Germany, but also in Russia and Japan) from an unexpected and original angle: that of the hunger that haunted the inmates so much that, remembering, they came to write down their favorite recipes… on sheets of paper or stolen tissue. at the risk of their lives.” —Le Blog Documentaire

“A breathtaking metaphor. The poetic strength of the recipes is intact.” —Telerama

Other Ways to Watch

Individuals

Home use DVD for $29.98

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Select Accolades

  • Special Jury Mention, Luchon Film Festival de Luchon
  • Berlin International Film Festival
  • Australia and New Zealand Jewish Film Festival
  • Toronto Jewish Film Festival
  • Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

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