"Food ReLOVution: What we eat can make a difference" is an eye-opening and compelling feature documentary that examines the consequences of the meat culture as concerns grow about health, world hunger, animal welfare and the environmental cost of livestock production. It aims to show how these global issues affect everyone and are interrelated, and how making our food choices with a sense of awareness, knowing what we are buying and what we are eating is the first fundamental step towards a better world.
It aims to be an inspiring tool of understanding and empowerment, reminding us that we have the power to change things if we really want, starting with ourselves. Everything we eat has a consequence. Knowing this helps us to reflect, to understand the impact of our daily choices and to act with awareness; actions based on coherence, understanding and the love that is born from respect for Life. The change we’ve been waiting for starts with ourselves. Choice is our most powerful weapon, let us learn to use it. Only then can we make a contribution to changing the world.
There is a need for us not simply to trust the food dogmas imposed by society, but to get to know what we eat, the only way that we can kickstart the revolution. A revolution carried out with love.
Food ReLOVution.
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Choosing food with awareness is a revolutionary act that can change the world.
Be part of the change, support our Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, here's the link: http://igg.me/at/foodrelovutionfilm/x/6430354
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DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT ///////////////////////
Food ReLOVution is the result of the meeting of two words, awareness and love, which were also key to my previous film, “Another World”. The themes that rouse my feelings, my passions, my thirst for knowledge, are the same but they manifest themselves in different issues. The fact that everything and everyone is interconnected means that every action becomes necessary in the balance of the circumstances that generate it and in the consequences that the action itself generates.
The film intends to provide necessary tools to those who are used to eating meat without worrying about the consequences. There is no pervading judgement, rather a desire to stimulate reflection, to unmask habits and to achieve tangible results. Even loving just one of the three categories explored (yourself, the environment and animals) brings an improvement. Not only a personal one. We need to debunk the myth that the behaviour of an individual has no effect on the whole. Each drop stirs the sea. And all behaviour is important in the end result.
If life is the basis for everything, food is the essential condition for it to prosper and flourish. Being aware that everything we eat has a consequence deriving from several factors is the first step towards protecting our bodies and the planet.
The idea of this film came just before the birth of my daughter Isabel. We can live by following the customs of the society in which we have grown up, but the gift of life that we are able to give comes with a great responsibility, which can raise questions about the things we have always known or taken for granted. This leads to a fundamental question. How will I raise my daughter and what kind of world will she have to live in? In a time such as this, even doing our grocery shopping with a sense of awareness, knowing what we are buying and what we are eating is the first fundamental step towards a better world. Because the world changes if the people in it change first, beginning with the smallest everyday gestures.
It’s possible to think big. You just need to want to.
Thomas Torelli
PROJECT DESCRIPTION ///////////////////////
We are what we eat, the philosopher Feuerbach said as early as 1850. The body and the mind are interconnected, so food has an effect upon thought. And therefore upon being. Everything that we eat has a consequence for our body, but also for the environment in which we live. And food of animal origin, of course, has a consequence for other living things. Given that we are all interconnected with each other, but at the same time with everything that surrounds us, every item of food that finishes on our plate is the result of a series of events, of factors, of effects deriving from a choice that we have made. Being aware of some of the dynamics that govern the way we eat allows us to be responsible for our actions and, as a result, for our judgement.
The “meat culture” is the main source of damaging causes, an economic activity that has completely lost its original rural and family-oriented character, becoming a ruthless tool that brings suffering and violence for what, in other contexts, we call our animal friends. With it comes deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution, climate change, hunger in the world, harm for the health of mankind and, as a consequence, an increase in disease.
Without demonising meat-eaters, this film will look at the transformation that has occurred in food over the last century, in particular over the last forty years. Man has turned the food industry, which is designed to provide sustenance for humans, into a utilitarian process with the sole objective of material gain. The bottom line is no longer to feed but rather to generate as much profit as possible.
Most of the food that passes through industry is harmful for mankind. Harmful over time. Some members of the scientific community have reached the conclusion that those who control the earth want people to become ill and to use medicine, in order for major pharmaceutical companies to sell their products. It has now become difficult to die peacefully of old age, with disease occurring in an ever-increasing proportion of the global population. And that’s just those who have access to food resources. The others are destined to die of hunger. All in the name of business.
Hunger and famine are not inevitable. According to the FAO, the amount of food currently being produced in the world could feed 12 billion people (double the actual population), yet more than 852 million still suffer from hunger and malnutrition. Every five seconds one child under the age of 5 dies from hunger or malnutrition-related disease. In a world “that is richer than ever before”, it is outrageous and unacceptable. There is an imbalance in the system that defies belief.
The animal protein industry is out of control, while the creation of intensive farming is the point at which the descent towards the abyss begun.
The approach is based on real and proven scientific facts and on the opinions of important figures in the world of medicine, the environment and the economy, and on actual figures, which will help to convey just how much is wrong in a production line that causes the death of three hundred animals every second in the United States alone, but also the serious repercussions in terms of the environment, the economy, health and ethics.
Everything we eat has a consequence. Knowing this helps us to reflect and to act with awareness, to understand the impact of our daily choices. As consumers we can avoid certain foods that are harmful on several levels, forcing producers to change their way of making food.
PEOPLE INTERVIEWED ///////////////////////
Food ReLOVution is a factual documentary featuring scholars and academics from, amongst others, leading universities and institutions from Australia, India, Italy and the United States. We’ve had the opportunity and honor of interviewing amazing and inspirational people. We’re immensely grateful for their contribution to the film. Take a look at the teaser clips on the Gallery section!
To read the complete biographies please visit our website.
The film features interviews with:
• FRANCO BERRINO MD, PhD in pathology, epidemiologist, director of the Department of Preventive and Predictive Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan (Italy). Author of hundreds of scientific publications, he was one of the few Italian researchers called to collaborate in the Food, nutrition, physical activity and the prevention of cancer, published in 2007 by the World Cancer Research Fund...
• T. COLIN CAMPBELL - For more than forty years, Dr. T. Colin Campbell has been at the forefront of nutrition research. His legacy, the China Project, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell is a professor Emeritus at Cornell University and is most well-known for co-authoring the bestselling book The China Study with his son, Thomas Campbell, MD...
• THOMAS M. CAMPBELL - In addition to being medical director of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, Dr. Campbell co-founder and clinical director of the University of Rochester Program for Nutrition in Medicine. The UR Program for Nutrition in Medicine is a groundbreaking, clinically-oriented approach to prevention and treatment through diet and lifestyle changes...
• NOAM MOHR - Physicist at Queens College with degrees from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked on global warming campaigns for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and EarthSave International, publishing a number of reports on climate change including A New Global Warming Strategy,Flirting with Disaster, Pumping Up the Price, and Storm Warning.
• FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ - Author or co-author of 18 books including the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Frances was named by Gourmet Magazine as one of 25 people, whose work has changed the way America eats. Her most recent work, released in September 2011, is EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want, winner of a silver medal from...
• CARLO PETRINI - President and Founder of the Slow Food Movement. He began writing about wine and food in 1977, and has contributed to hundreds of Italian periodicals and other publications around the world. Growing increasingly frustrated by the industrialization of the food supply and the erosion of quality in the food he saw around him, Petrini began to forge...
• VANDANA SHIVA - Dr. Shiva trained as a Physicist at the University of Punjab, and completed her Ph.D. on the ‘Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory’ from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy. In 1982, she founded an independent institute – the Research Foundation for Science...
• PETER SINGER - Singer is often described as the world’s most influential living philosopher. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2014 he was third on the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute’s ranking of Global Thought Leaders. He is known especially for his work on the ethics of our treatment of animals...
• JAMES WILDMAN - Wildman holds a Master’s degree in Humane Education from the Institute for Humane Education. He is the Humane Educator for the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida (ARFF). The goal of ARFF’s Humane Education program is to encourage a sense of personal responsibility toward animals and the planet, to empower young people to make conscious, compassionate choices...
ABOUT US /////////////////////////////////
THOMAS TORELLI / Director & Writer
Director and writer Thomas Torelli is a Rome-based filmmaker. Early work included editing and executive production. His critically acclaimed and award-winning feature documentary ZERO: An Investigation into 9/11, premiered at the 2007 Rome Film Festival and was distributed worldwide. He has produced and authored 7 documentaries, including Sangue e Cemento, which he also directed, about the Abruzzo earthquake, nominated at the Nastri d’Argento for Best Documentary of the Year. He recently completed Un altro mondo - Another World which premiered at the 2014 RIFF - Rome Independent Film Festival and the Phoenix Film Festival to wide public and critical acclaim. The film won the “Best Documentary Award” at the Clorofilla Film Festival, the official festival of Legambiente (Italy). It has recently won two awards at the the 27th edition of the Bienal Internacional de Cine Científico - BICC Ronda (Spain): the Public Choice Award “Diploma ASECIC / BICC 2014” and the “ASECIC Guillermo F. Zúñiga Trophy” to the Best Scientific Film.
If you’d like to read a little more about our wonderful team, please visit our website.
The crew
- Written and Directed by / THOMAS TORELLI
- Produced by / RICCARDO GATTO / BLUMA LAB SRL
- Associate Producer / THOMAS TORELLI
- Director of Photography / FRANCESCO PENNICA
- Editor / DONYE SACCO
- Assistant Director / CLAUDIA PALAZZI
- Production Assistant / CLAUDIA PALAZZI
- Production Assistant / GABRIELA RAMIREZ
- Copywriter / IGOR ARTIBANI
- Art Director, Communication & Marketing / GABRIELA RAMIREZ
Thank you for your support!