Devour! The Food Film Fest begins Wednesday night in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley.
While most of the films featured in the unique festival are international, the tastes are local.
“Anyone around the world who is making a movie about food or wine, they are looking for a venue to screen it, to show it, to find a distributor in the future,” says Michael Howell, the festival’s executive director. “We want Devour! to be the place that they do that.”
The festival also showcases Wolfville and Nova Scotia as a food destination.
After Thursday’s screening of “Now, Forager,” Chef Dave Smart will host a gala dinner based on food featured in the film.
“We basically built the menu to model some of the high points of the film,” says Smart. “So, there was a scene with striped bass in it, for instance, so we’re having striped bass as a main course.”
Several gala dinners are planned at local restaurants and their menus include food grown on local farms.
“I think it is inspiring and exciting,” says organic farmer Patricia Bishop. “I think that farmers will feel really empowered with the amount of energy that is being put into films around food and wine and our community culture.”
Wolfville’s popular Magic Winery Bus Tour will also be a part of Devour! and an express bus will take participants to the Foxhill Cheese House for the All You Need Is Cheese tour, starting Friday.
Foxhill Cheese will be featured along with two other Nova Scotia fromageries and a selection of winners from the Canadian Cheese Grand Prix.
The festival opens Wednesday evening with “The Fruit Hunters,” a documentary about exotic fruit cultivators, at Wolfville’s historic Acadia Theatre. The festival runs through Sunday.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jayson Baxter
