[Home]    [Guidelines]   [Taste Education]    [Examples]     [Appendix] The Tucson Slow Food & Film Festival Tucson Convivium Tucson, USA Activity : Linking food and culture Convivium Leader: Barry Infuso, foodfoodfood@msn.com www.slowfoodtucson.org An extended weekend festival of new & classic food films, culinary events and cultural discussions. A different way to learn about food. The city of Tucson has less than one million citizens and lies in the Sonora desert. It is the town of the University of Arizona. There is a lot of interest in outdoors and outdoor activity. Tucson is a destination city for conventions and conferences. Mexican food (Mexico is just one hour away), but also local produce reflect flavours of the southwest. Tucson is also known for American grill type restaurants. Purchase as a group has blossomed into large organizations. And there is a good number of food events that are organized. In our convivium there are approx. 100 members. At the beginning there were about 10 original members and then it just started growing each year. The convivium grew slowly year after year, but steadily. The average age of our members is around 40-50. Occasionally we see younger people but usually they are brought by someone else. Most of the members are professionals who want to be a part of Slow Food philosophy: university professors, attorneys, public relations people, wine people. A lot of them come from college and work there. There is also a good number of retired people. Food to eat, Food to watch We had been thinking about the idea of organizing a Slow Food film festival. Finally in 2006 we managed to organize the first edition: 3 days of food in films and at restaurants. We decided to have the nights organized with themes, having the dinners first, followed by the screening of the films. The opening night was with the film “Big Night”, so that was an Italian theme. One character in the film is called Primo and we had a restaurant called Primo recreate the menu from “Big Night”. On the second night we had the film “Tortilla Soup”, so we had a Mexican dinner. And on the final third night we had a Chinese theme with the film “Eat Drink Man Woman” preceded by a fitting dinner. For each movie we had guest speakers. Not dry speakers, but people who were very tied with their communities. The Italian speaker for “Big Night”, for example, had so much to add. We noticed anyhow that having the theme dinners first and the films after didn’t work as we wanted. The number of people going from the dinner to the movie was lower, although we sold the tickets for both. Probably having a dinner, a guest speaker and a movie afterwards was too tiring. So in 2007 we changed the format. The most important change was that we spread the focus on non commercial films as well, all scheduled on the Festival’s central day. Obviously we also had commercial films, like “Chocolat“ and “Babette's Feast“, and some appealing brunches and dinners. Putting the organizing frames together There are a lot of food activities in Tucson, but we didn’t want to just do another one. The Film Festival seemed a good idea and it was just a matter of seeing how we were going to do it. We contacted different parties. We were not turned down by anyone, everybody loved the idea. The main aspects of the organization were the expenses for renting films and the location, but one of the local theatres was happy to assist us. Some restaurants donated the entire meal and the service. For smaller restaurant we obtained $1500 in food from a food company which helped out, otherwise everything else was provided by the restaurants. Costs were not terribly high. Money came from past events, where we charged a bit extra for our events (a bit more for members and non members). Except the prices for the theatre and movies, we found someone who printed program for us for a minimal expense. We took care of guest speakers and paid the meals for them. We planed relatively low prices for the participation at the festivals’ events. We wanted it to be accessible, we wanted people to learn. People had to send in cheques to reserve tickets. We had some late comers but primarily the payments were in advance. The number of participants was determined by the places at the restaurants. For the first Festival we planed no advertising at all. Nevertheless the city magazine mentioned it in the date book section and gave us half a page. We don’t know if brought in people, but it was good advertising for sure. For the second Festival we got advertising help from the PIMA foundation, which is the fundraising arm of PIMA college and has good connections to the press. Indeed the well known Bon Appétit magazine covered the Festival. Both Festivals were very successful. There were hundreds of people attending, some also subscribed the membership and we made important profits. What made the Festivals successful too were the convivium members. People who found out about the movies and gave donations. We used the profit of the first event to support native seed savers, a local organic farm south of Tucson, an Indian tribe as well a cultural organization. The profit from movie tickets of the second event was given for scholarships. It is very important to have to this done. This makes Slow Food and its values more visible in the community. In “The End”… We highly recommend an event like ours. It provides people with a different, maybe more unusual approach with food. And that’s what makes it interesting and attracts people. Start of small. We had no expectations for success or failure. We had no spectres of fear. People who want to help come forward. Use the resources you have. If there is something you can’t do rather ask: does anyone know someone who can? Success breeds success. Once you have had success, people want to get on board the following year. And this will help a lot for the following events. For further information on the Tucson Slow Food & Film Festival please visit: http://www.slowfoodtucson.org/filmfest.asp Good luck! << [Back]    [Home]    [List all examples]    [Next] >>