Filmmaker Byron Hurt has managed to make a documentary about how his soul-food-loving father died of pancreatic cancer and at the same time how America is battling obesity and weight-related diseases. Soul Food Junkies, a 65-minute journey through the origins of Americas love of fatty food, was prescreened this week at a theater at Lincoln Center in New York.
The show was preceded by a performance by socially conscious rap-duo Dead Prez, who took the audience to the gym with their music by extolling, healthy is the new gangster.
Later a panel discussion ensued on everything from the popular resistance to the New York City soda-ban to whether its problematic that yet another movie puts African-American dirty laundry on display.
Some years ago Mr. Hurt, a Long Island native who now lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter, moved from working in PR to becoming a full-time filmmaker.
Coincidentally, it was his late father who told him that if he decided to be a filmmaker he should just be committed to it. In his opening address Mr. Hurt credits those words with carrying him through. Every time I got rejected for a grant my fathers words stood in my mind.
Mr. Hurts most popular work to date has been the 2006 film Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes which showed at the Sundance Film Festival and later on Independent Lens, the Emmy award-winning PBS series.
His current flick opens with Mr. Hurt introducing his father and listing, in sumptuous detail, the grits, eggs, cheese and pork-stacked sandwiches his father liked to eat. Uneasy laughter filtered through the theater as the image of a loaded sandwich, at first tempting, left the audience a bit queasy.
The big screen went on to show how at first the energetic looking senior Mr. Hurt became overweight and then ravaged by cancer and gaunt. One of the risk factors associated with developing pancreatic cancer is eating fatty foods, including pork and processed meats. In the movie Mr. Hurt goes on to answer the difficult the question did soul food kill his father?
In his journey to find the answer Mr. Hurt blends gravity with levity and ventures into the Deep South to explore the origins of old-fashioned, home-cooked soul food; contrasting it with how processed foods have changed the nutritional value of produce.
In a country where the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than one-third of U.S. adults are overweight, Mr. Hurt tries to offer insight in to what has gone wrong in the food supply-chain as well as what America needs to do in order reverse the descent into obesity.
A healthy debate about the state of African-American wellness followed the screening. Prominent African-American figures appeared in the documentary and in the live-panel discussion, among them the Assistant Commissioner of Health for New York City Dr. Aletha Maybank, Activist and Poet Sonia Sanchez.
During Q&A, an audience member stood up and asked the panelists why black people are so skeptical about the New York City large-soda ban.
Panelist and Author Marc Lamont Hill answered that Americans have a healthy distrust of government. Mr. Hill continued by saying that government bans are often ineffective as the government does not invest in providing people with a healthier alternative.
Dr. Maybank pointed to government bans and awareness campaigns that have worked and argued that the national anti-smoking campaign and the indoor smoking ban in New York have lowered the smoking rates. Dr. Maybank ventured that, policy is not the only solution, as people need to make a personal decision to change their habits.
When asked whether he was concerned about depicting black people as problem laden, Mr. Hurt responded that while some people worried he was going to denigrate black people he was striving to show African -Americans in all their complexity and humanity.
The event closed with much appreciated and moderate portions of soul food by SoulFixins. Soul Food Junkies will broadcast nationally on Independent Lens on PBS on January 14, 2013.
