‘I shared my food, I don't want to share my story’ - A lesson learnt filming Red Chef Revival
When you film documentaries in some of the remotest parts of the worlds, you‘re ready for almost anything – a change of plans, stories falling short, interview guests bailing out just before the camera rolls or even local production-help standing you up. When you’re in the field, you’re never off-job. What’s more, your antennas need to be alert to any strand of information that could lead you to the bigger story.
A few months ago I was working on my first production gig in Canada with the fantastic Black Rhino Creative. Having just settled from India, I was very excited. We travelled to Alberta - a Western Canadian province, home to the third largest oil reserve in the world, to film an episode of the widely acclaimed series Red Chef Revival (if you haven't had a chance to watch it yet, do it right away! It's available for free on YouTube).
The shows logline is 'More than a cooking show, this is a people’s story on a plate'. So apart from the traditional indigenous recipes for bison heart, beaver tail, moose nose, seal and cougar, we were also on the hunt for real stories from real people. Our first call, Fort McMurray, was a little city in northeast Alberta that survived a major wildfire in 2016. It destroyed about 2400 homes and buildings and still today you can witness its effect on the area’s wildlife. You can feel a thin layer of dusty ash over almost everything – like a dreadful memory that won’t let you move on. Houses were burnt, lives evacuated, and broad trees reduced to tall, needle like structures jutting into the blue Albertan sky – standing tall in the face of adversity.
To best capture our scene, we were using drones in a great spot alongside the national highway. As any good producer on location would, I made a quick scan of our surroundings. As I peered around, a tall man bearing a worn out t-shirt and denims emerged from behind a brown curtain of dried trees. He too bore a question mark on his face. Assuming he was the owner of the property, I put my best smile on and walked towards him. ‘We’re here filming a small documentary. It’s a small crew.’ I went on. It’s always a good idea to undersell your project while shooting guerrilla style. You never know how much you might have to shell out to rid yourself of an unforeseen situation. Clearly not worried about trespassing, he smiled back and welcomed me into his property.
I believe all producers' brains are wired for random conversations, you never know where the next story might come from! As we walked through his frontyard, I tried to spot some clues to his lifestory. A broken car, a worn out tool house, a rusty BBQ set that must have seen a lot of summers and then his house, still under construction. Was it destroyed in the wildfire? Could this work for my show? Will he agree to be filmed? Why not! I wondered. Breaking my thoughts, he insisted on me meeting his girlfriend. I readily agreed.
Stubbing her cigarette as she emerged, out came what I would call a badass-looking countrywoman. She had an expression of controlled curiosity. 'What is a brown girl doing here in one of the remotest towns of Canada!' I self-conciously guessed she must have thought. I talked about the project, the series, the episode we were here to film and so on. I dropped a few names of the people we were filming - always a good idea if you want people to trust you quickly.
Behind the scenes while shooting Red Chef Revival. Photo credit Ryan Mah.
When she heard that I was interviewing a friend of hers she exclaimed, “It’s been so long since I last saw her! Take the goose I have. You can even cook it on your show.” She rushed into the kitchen and brought out a freshly feathered goose! My urban sensibilities kicked in, and with a few feathers still sticking out of its hind legs, I wasn't sure how I’d take it back with me.
In India, if someone offers something to you that you want to accept, you initially say ‘No’ and after a lot of insisting from the giver you finally take it. So the first ‘No’ is considered a polite gesture, or just being humble. But here in the West, it doesnt work that way. If you want it, just take it!
So, I readily took the meat and was happy to have made such a connection in a new country. But the documentary producer in me wasn’t satisfied with the food. I wanted her story. I tested my luck and asked her about her house. She made herself comfortable in one of the other wooden chairs on the porch. She told me it had burned in the wildfire of 2016 and that they were painstakingly rebuilding it and struggling to finish it. It's never easy to hear someone talk about their house and life being ravaged by calamity.
I assumed that since she was being friendly, she’d be comfortable speaking on camera. ‘What’s the big deal?!’ I thought. And that was my mistake. I set off in my usual style, explaining that speaking up and sharing your story will be good to the wider society etc…
She patiently listened before taking a long drag of her cigarette,“I shared my food with you, I dont want to share my story.” With that sentence, she educated me about one’s right to their story. Something that we journalists and producers, at times, take for granted.
I didn’t get the story, but I got a lesson for life.
Red Chef Revival, is a 6 x 22 minute food and travel show exploring modern Indigenous cuisine in Canada through the eyes of three chefs: New York Times featured Cezin Nottaway, Top Chef Canada finalist Rich Francis and Chopped Canada finalist Shane Chartrand. Using food as their access point, these chefs discover a new path to reconciliation.
