All pictures: courtesy of the Goethe-Institut
This film on culinary heritage highlights the role cooking and eating together play in the survival of material and immaterial culture and in the development of an inclusive and porous sense of identity that is based on community and personal connections.
Inheritance, patrimony, birthright: so many ideas around what’s handed down in families, generation through generation. Just like heritage, these ideas are profoundly connected with legal structures that reflect a specific approach to what a family is, what it owns, and who is entitled to that property. When it comes to food, these categories immediately become quite difficult to define, let alone uphold. Food:Generations, a documentary created by Polish food expert Monika Kucia for the Kultur Symposium Weimar 2021, focuses instead on aspects of intergenerational transmission of culinary knowledge and practices that brim with emotions and sensory (disclaimer: I know Monika Kucia well; she was actually the one who first invited me to Poland to explore the local gastronomy back in 2016).
From this point of view, the documentary shares some elements with the series High on the Hog, although the historical and cultural context is obviously quite different. In Poland’s case, despite partitions, invasions, mass relocations, and decades of a socialist regime, material culture was able to be maintained, even if with inevitable adaptations. Racial and ethnic tensions, although present, played a different role in the development of cuisine.
The film uses pierogi, the ever-present stuffed dumplings with innumerable variations across the region, as a narrative thread. Pierogi are among the Polish specialties that are best known outside of Poland, and as such they constitute an easy introduction to the topic. Mass produced ones are easily found in many stores and supermarkets around the world; artisanal ones are obviously more appreciated, such as those from the Pierogi Boys in New York City or the restaurant Apteka in Pittsburgh, just to mention two US sources. And then there are those made at home.
They are so ubiquitous as symbols of Polish cuisine that the country may have a “pierogi problem,” as Tomasz Duda, chef at the Polish Embassy in London, once jokingly told me. They may obscure many other products and dishes that would deserve better international recognition. Moreover, similar dumplings, both in their savory and sweet versions, are found in other neighboring Central and Eastern countries, especially those who were part of the early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which also included parts of Ukraine and Belarus.
They are still widely hand-made, taught within families, and enjoyed on many occasions. Food:Generations looks at five families in different places of Poland with diverse backgrounds in terms of social status and education. For instance, we see an interracial family, a young man with painted fingernails who plays the accordion, and a young woman with her hair dyed green and a nose ring. Definitely not the kind of uniform Poland that the current government is trying not only to project abroad, but also to support – and at times to impose – internally. Yet, despite these differences, grandmothers and grandchildren are all filmed in their kitchen, around the table, making dumplings.
By telling stories and sharing memories, they acquire a sense of place and common culture that no institutional process of heritage making could ever provide. No UNESCO is involved, no geographical indications or Slow Food presidia. Each family is proud of their own culinary quirks. They may admit that their pierogi are not the best; however, they are theirs, a source of pride and identity. Grandmothers, more than mothers, are central to this transmission of skills and knowledge. No grandfathers appear in the documentary, reflecting a traditional division of roles in the household that has not completely disappeared. From this point of view, patriarchy is obviously in the background, with the kitchen as a space where those rules apply in a different way. Women are the protagonists, even when grandsons appear on camera.
Grandmothers are living connections with the past, a past that may be scarcely recognizable to their grandchildren. Hints at food scarcity and other harsh circumstances are there, but they are now dwelt upon. So are the tensions between the grandmothers and their daughters, who apparently are not so keen on cooking or on teaching their children. In other words, the transformations brought about by demographic changes, the much greater presence of women in the labor market, and the impact of feminism are not discussed head on but rather left in the background. That is understandable in a celebratory document that, although not overdoing it in terms of food porn, still celebrates the sensuality of what’s on camera.
In these Polish domestic kitchens culinary heritage is not only explored and learned theoretically, but is experienced physically. The importance of smell, touch, flavors, movements are highlighted over and over not only in the making of the pierogi, but also in the conversations that surround them. The documentary adopts an ethnographic approach that reminds us of what food scholar Meredith Abarca has described as charlas culinarias: sitting at the table, participating in women’s chats that take place in their kitchen, to better understand their worldviews and their experiences. Kucia, the filmmaker, only appears in the end, sitting at the table and sharing the bounty of pierogi, but all the “oooh, this is so good… oh, the texture is incredible” that are common in other food films are refreshingly absent. The focus remains on the family experience, not on our vicarious pleasures as viewers.
While various types of pierogi are included in the culinary canon put together by the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Institute for Rural Cultural and Heritage, what counts in this documentary is not so much national identity or the economic potential of Polish products. What emerges is a perspective on heritage that underlines instead the role cooking and eating together play in the survival of material and immaterial culture and in the development of an inclusive and porous sense of identity that is based on community, resistant to definitions but not because of that lacking in clarity.