Plays at The Vic Theatre
808 Douglas Street.
Victoria, BC
May 13, 2016, 7pm
May 15, 2016, 7pm
Food samples will be offered before the screening of this film.
Director Ian Toews and Producer Mark Bradley will be present for a Q&A afterwards.
If you give me a home where edible bugs roam, I can easily snack on them all day like popcorn. Not everyone is keen on the concept, but I’m open to the idea of nibbling on mealworms or crickets. Some folks think of it as just a gimmick to add to the gross factor, but when the apocalypse comes and most of the traditional livestock are gone, irradiated, just what else can a person eat? It’s almost as simple as digging in one’s back yard!
Or you better know the difference between edible fungi and the poisonous ones. Eating insects should not be a shocker. I point out one famous scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Dr. René Belloq had some bug climb into his mouth and it never came out. Not even in editing did Steven Spielberg consider cutting that scene out or using a different take (who knows how many times that moment was filmed). If actor Paul Freeman was ever asked about that one scene, I’m sure he’d say it was delicious!
The documentary Bugs on the Menu looks at a new movement of cultivating sustainability in the food market that’s taking place all around the world. Instead of the traditional meats and “the harm” animal rights advocates are opining about, humanity can find a new way of sustaining itself by growing certain bugs for human consumption. People can’t randomly capture them in the wild for concerns over what kind of toxins may be in them, so they have to be raised. Documentarian Ian Toews travels to South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana to learn about what’s being farmed. From Mopane caterpillars to termites, the thought of trying to eat the latter will have some folks gagging at the thought. No, I doubt Indy would have been able to eat his way out of a red soldier ant brigade, but the fourth (and lamented) film in this series did come to mind.
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Christmas comes early to film lovers in the form of the Victoria Film Festival. The annual event, established in 1994, has released a snippet of what entries are being offered in the new year long after the presents have been unwrapped and the bottle of Sheri has been thoroughly emptied.
If Christmas is a time for ballet in the form of Tch Nutcracker then why not in the form of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Live from the Metropolitan, this almost six hour performance will be conducted by James Levine and stars Johan Reuter. 
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