Luc Moullet's ORIGINS OF A MEAL (1978) + MORE AND MORE (1994)
Moullet's first feature-length documentary, paired with a later short film that expands on Moullet's ideas about the same political epicenter: the grocery store.
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Sep 11, 2025, 8:00 PM
2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057, USA
Origins of a Meal (Genèse d’un repas)
directed by Luc Moullet
1978, France, 115m, DCP
Brand new 4K restoration! Screening as part of Luc Moullet: Hardly Working, a Mezzanine retrospective.
doors/bar 7:30
film 8:00
Wherein Moullet turns his typically incisive gaze onto something deceptively simple: his own plate. In this groundbreaking documentary, Moullet deftly traces the process of how workers are exploited and capital is extracted in the process of getting food to our tables. Without overt critique (but with his regular injections of humor and charm), he juxtaposes the sanitized rhetoric of businessmen and managers with the stark realities of workers, and takes the opportunity to implicate both the viewer (and especially himself) in maintaining this system. Origins of a Meal may make your next trip to the grocery store a little more troubling - as it perhaps should be.
In French with English subtitles. A Cinema Guild release.
"With Origins of a Meal, an insightful documentary about the globalization of the economy and the metamorphic nature of colonial and imperialist pursuits, Luc Moullet grasps the inadequacy of old models and forms of militant cinema to accommodate the non-binary nature of the current global system, and the necessarily subjective and personal implication of the filmmaker." - Audrey Evrard, Jump Cut
Preceded by:
More and More (Toujours plus)
1994, France, 24m, DCP
Moullet examines what just may be the cathedral of high-consumerism and, by extension, capitalist society: the modern supermarket. -Film at Lincoln Center
Total runtime: 139m