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KITCHEN
STORIES/
FOOD FILMS/
FILM
MAIN
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Dir: Bent
Hamer/ Written by: Bent Hamer, Jörgen Bergmark/ With: Bjørn
Floberg, Joachim Calmeyer, Tomas Norströ/ Norway, Sweden/
2003/ 95 mins/ ICA Projects
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Did you know that on average a
1950s Swedish housewife walked the equivalent distance
from Sweden to Congo each year whilst carrying out her
kitchen chores, and that by simply organising herself
along assembly line principles she could significantly
reduce this amount? This kind of clinical rationalisation,
which is gently lampooned in Kitchen Stories, was
typical of post-war organisations which looked to science
as the solution to everything. Set in 50s Norway, Kitchen
Stories sees a fleet of observers from the Swedish
Home Research Institute descend on the rural enclave of
Landstad to observe the kitchen routines of single men,
whose habits apparently yield vital information on how
best to calibrate inefficiency in the home. Thus the scene
is set for the humorous interplay between one uptight
observer and his more rustic subject. Director Hamer is a
confident comedian, and his visual humour carries this
curious story along. Part satire on social control and
part humorous fable about friendship, Kitchen Stories
also offers a distinctly absurdist vision of the
aesthetics and ideologies of the time. If one colour were
to evoke the 50s it would be that kind of optimistic yet
strangely clinical green, so prevalent in civic crockery
and domestic bathrooms. And of course, this is the hue of
the somehow otherworldly egg-shaped caravans which descend
on Landstad.
From the London
International Film Festival programme / Sarah Lutton
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