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Morgan Spurlock's Documentary Features Artisanal Craftsmen

This article is more than 8 years old.

Who has time to wait 28 months for their chef’s knife to be made?  We live in a world that expects immediate gratification, one that favors speed and efficiency rather than appreciating the time it takes for things to be made by hand or to create with history and soul as key ingredients. And yet, the artisanal movement is thriving. Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary commissioned by Haagen Dazs (R) brand, Crafted, explores the lives of three modern artisan chefs  to learn why we’re hungry for handmade.

“I think we’ve become disconnected from so many things, from each other, from our daily lives,” says Spurlock. “There is connection to the things we use, to how we interact with [them], the food we eat. And the artisanal movement, part of what is driving that is that desire to connect with something of value, to connect with something that someone took time to make that was imbued and filled with someone’s passion, and dedication and time.”

Spurlock starts the film by introducing viewers to the men behind Bloodroot Blades from Arnoldsville, Georgia, where a chef’s knife runs around $550 and won’t be seen in your kitchen for at least two years because they’re working through their backlog of orders.

“The ability to work with our hands is a gift,” says David van Wyk, one of the knifemakers behind Bloodroot Blades, in the film “I’ve realized that outside of people, the things that I care about in my life are made by hand. My cello was made by a friend; my bow is made by a craftsman in Paris in the 1800s. I care about those things and I treasure those things and I make sure those things are cared for. And I think that’s why people have become more interested in the identity in the things that they own.”

Spurlock agrees with van Wyk and feels the importance that we put on things of value has been lacking since everything has become so disposable in our society.

If you look at these knives the guys from Bloodroot Blades make, there is nothing disposable about what they make – they take other stuff that people are ready to throw away and they’ll reimagine it into a knife that will ultimately be in your family forever and to be able to create something like is almost an heirloom, that you will be able to pass down, is incredible.”

When I ask why Spurlock feels people are willing to wait that long for a set of knives, he laughs. “Good things are worth the wait – you’ll wait years before you’ll open a bottle of wine, why wouldn’t you wait years before you’d get a really great set of knives?” he asks me. “It’s all where you place value.”

The willingness to wait and not rush for something to be crafted is a strong theme throughout the film which is often filled with romantic images of rustic scenery and colorful plating of dishes.

“We can have anything we want delivered to our doorstep pretty much any minute of any day right now the way that the world functions,” says Chef Courtney Burns of Bar Tartine in San Francisco, in the film, seated alongside her co-chef Nick Balla. “ When we make things by hand, we can’t have it right away. And so we get to slow that momentum down just a bit.

“Part of the reason we make things is because we want to understand them but also there is a kind of underlying desire to slow down and one way to slow down is to cook and to make things by hand.”

Spurlock thinks the film touches on the importance of why things made by hand still matter. “I had a grandparents and a mother who crafted things my whole life and I feel like some of that is lost,” he says.

Besides that lost art, he feels the lasting impact of handcrafted items is just as important to our culture today, and for tomorrow.

“We all hope to build something that will have a lasting impact and I think that’s the one thing that really comes across in this film,” says Spurlock. “We want to hope that the time that we spend on this earth is seen as not just a fleeting moment, [but] that something we do is going to stand the test the time and outlast all of us. What they are doing at Nagatini Inn (where Mr. Yugi Nagatani and his team make clay cooking pots for Iga Mono) and what they’re doing with their craft and the pottery they’re making, what the guys at Bloodroot Blades are doing and the creations that are happening at Bar Tartine, this is stuff that will transcend, that people will talk about for a long time, and long after these folks are gone.”

Crafted premiered in Los Angeles yesterday and is available beginning today through Amazon Prime Instant Video.

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