The acclaimed filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker have created a stunning new documentary, Kings of Pastry, that follows Jacquy Pfeiffer and 15 other very talented chefs through the rigorous three day pastry competition at the Meilleur Ouvrier de France (MOF).
Granted permission to film only one day before the famed competition began, the MOF directors demanded that the filmmakers follow very strict guidelines: no camera booms, radio mics, lights or other equipment could be used.
In addition, each day’s filming was conditional. Yet after the first day, the chefs amass approved their return because they recognized that, like themselves, these filmmakers were masters of their media.
For three days Hegedus and Pennebaker filmed the intensity and stunning talents of the competing chefs. But their camera recorded far more then spun sugar and curving chocolate. It captures the strength and courage that great creativity requires.
This remarkable film, which anyone who loves food should see, is a treasury of truth about the meaning of vocation, so passionate it becomes, dispute stress and effort, joy and truth itself… a truth that the filmmakers described as “like ice, like fire.”
Every scene seen in Kings of Pastry is genuine, full of those real moments of icy concentration and burning conmittment that those, who have also labored for love of expression, know are so seldom seen beyond the kitchen.
You will cry and you will cheer the final ribboned collar awarded and understand why, as only one who loved the profession can, the justice of the Judges' decision.
Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!!!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011
