It seems that we are increasingly besotted with knowing about where our food is coming from. It’s difficult to turn on the TV these days without seeing a new report on the benefits of organic fruit or the perils of GM or Jamie Oliver ranting about the evils of battery chickens. But, as Nikolaus Geyrhaulter’s new documentary shows, this is just the tip of the iceberg. His depiction of industrial food production in Europe presents a world so alien, so expansive and so mechanised that it resembles something from a science fiction film.
Geyrhaulter presents us with a series of shots ranging from an olive tree being harvested in seconds, hundreds of apples floating in swimming pool-like lanes and chickens being uniformly slaughtered on a conveyer belt. These images of supremely efficient mechanisation are shot in vivid HD, constructed with painterly symetricality.
There are flashes of extreme beauty; footage of men working in cavernous salt mines has a fairytale quality and a shot of a fertiliser plane swooping towards the camera over a vast field of sunflowers is simply stunning. The images are made all the more striking by the fact that there is no voiceover or music, the soundtrack is solely comprised of the rhythms of the machinery. And this, combined with the repetitive motions of the production line, has an almost hypnotic effect upon the viewer.
This trance is broken at the end of the film, however, the final brutal slaughterhouse scene. There is a woman covered in blood beheading chickens, pigs being gutted and, most distressing of all, a cow scrabbling to escape its impending death. Geryhaulter shows slaughter unflinchingly and shoots the scenes in exactly the same painterly fashion as the rest of the film. Yet there is something incredibly distressing about the way in which these animals are bred solely for our consumption and the detachment with which the factory workers treat their carcases.
Most people’s knowledge of food production on this scale comes from the grainy, badly lit expose footage such as that shown in Jamie Oliver’s documentary, which has the clear motive of shocking the public.
Geryhaulter’s film is unique in that he sets about to show the process of food production in an unbiased, objective manner. He is simply revealing the system of processes behind the food which we take for granted when we go to the supermarket every week. In their sheer efficiency these processes may impress some as an achievement of civilized humanity, conversely it might very likely put you off your dinner.
Our Daily Bread is showing at the ICA in London until 28 February 2008.