Every year, the Newport Beach Film Festival (October 15-22) hosts a culinary film series featuring a handful of films devoted to various gastronomic topics. This year, the highlight of the five culinary films has a local angle.
“California Roll: The Rise of American Sushi,” a new feature documentary exploring the history of sushi in America, from its post-WWII roots in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo to its emergence as a globally respected cuisine. The film traces the California Roll’s rise from a culinary workaround for Western palates to a cultural phenomenon, with a pivotal chapter set at California Beach Rock N Sushi, a Newport Beach restaurant that became the after-hours clubhouse for the founders of the surf and skate industry in the mid-to-late 1980s.
The film includes interviews with people who lived through that era, including Danny Kwock, one of the flashiest members of the “Echo Beach” era of punk-infused surf-rock stardom, and Hide Mita, a sushi chef who became the face of California Beach Rock N Sushi.
It’s a fun look back at an era that defined the surf culture and helped promote sushi to the masses.
Other films in the Culinary Series include “Burgundy,” the story of France’s iconic wine area; “Fork in the Road,” an intimate documentary that explores the profound connections between people, the land, and the future of our food system, told through a tapestry of compelling stories from independent small-scale farmers across the United States; “How to Feed a Dictator,” follows five chefs who once cooked for Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, and Kim Jong-il, where one wrong ingredient could mean death – and where the decision to keep cooking meant looking away from everything happening outside the kitchen door; and “Noor: Eating History,” that delves into the creative universe of the restaurant Noor, where Paco Morales and Paola Gualandi reinterpret the legacy of Al-Andalus through haute cuisine.
Visit NewportBeachFilmFest.com for tickets and showtimes.
