Published October 31, 2013 12:00AM
Southern Food, Centerstage
The Southern Foodways Alliance searches out the best hidden food personalities in the American South, tells their stories in films and oral histories, and puts their farms and restaurants on the map. We called filmmaker Joe York to find out why he works so hard to raise the profile of out-of-the-way cooks, farmers, and ranchers.
Southern barbecue being prepared at an outdoor festival.
RAMSHACKLE IS THE WORD 35-year-old filmmaker Joe York used to describe everything about his first documentary film shoot. In the spring of 2003, the 25-year-old University of Mississippi graduate student set off on a 10-hour drive, from Oxford, Mississippi, to Berea, Kentucky, in a silver 1992 Saturn SL2 with an odometer that had tired of ticking off miles at 220,000. In the backseat, York had thrown a Canon GL2 camera and a Sennheiser shotgun mic that he had rummaged out of boxes found in an Ole Miss AV room. He had little experience making a film, but figured his knowledge of how to tell a good story would suffice. He spent four days shooting, drove ten hours home, and looked at his nine hours of footage. “It was like that moment you return from the one-hour photo and realize you don’t have anything,” he says.
Pride & Joy. A film by Joe York about the heart and soul of Southern Food.
