Film is an important language, direct and powerful, and the need to explore its relevance and potential led Slow Food to create the Slow Food on Film festival. It was a natural step for the association, given that it works to preserve memory and to confirm the cultural identity of people in opposition to a standardization of flavors, cultures and customs and a dominant school of thought.

Slow Food on Film documents, describes, denounces, informs and communicates. It provides a platform and a voice to the collective imagination about food, looking at food culture from every possible angle, with a natural preference for an aware and “slow” approach to the world of gastronomy and food production. Urges, perversions, social implications, identities and emotions relating to food are all explored in unique and often surprising ways.

The Slow Food on Film international festival is organized by Slow Food and the Cineteca di Bologna and will be held May 6-10, 2009, in Bologna.


Slow Food on Film will offer Slow Fish visitors an enticing taste of the main festival, with a series of films on the themes of the sea, fishing and water.
A showcase of features, shorts, documentaries and rare historical clips will offer information and reflection, entertainment and history, inspiring reflection and discussion about these universal themes. Inspiring debate is one of Slow Food on Film’s primary goals, and these films are intended to do just that.


The program of screenings at Slow Fish will open with Cry Sea, by Cafi Mohamud and Luca Cusani. Winning an honorable mention at Slow Food on Film 2008, and soon to be released as part of the festival’s DVD series, the documentary recounts the disastrous repercussions that huge industrial fishing boats from Europe are having on Senegal’s fishermen. Other films to be shown include Silent Snow, a short documentary about a village in the Antarctic which won a Golden Snail award in 2008; an episode of the BBC television series Cooking in the Danger Zone (another 2008 winner) on whale hunting; and classic documentaries from the Cineteca di Bologna archive dealing with the fishing industry in post-war Italy, including some masterpieces by Vittorio De Seta.


In the Slow Food on Film screening room on the mezzanine level of the Genoa Fiera’s Pavilion B.


The Slow Food on Film series at Slow Fish will be held during the event’s opening hours: on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 11 am to 11 pm and on Monday from 11 am to 8 pm.