Food Film Festival: Taste What You See On Screen

Of all the food festivals nationwide — from food truck feasts to BBQ celebrations — not many embrace two art forms at the same time. And then there's the Food Film Festival: the film festival that only showcases movies about eating, drinking, and cooking. Presented in association with the James Beard Foundation, the festival brings to life and serve anything that you see on the screen. This year's eighth-annual Food Film Festival will be coming this fall to New York, and will feature films about sriracha, "edible balls," (like meatballs and rice balls), some guy who rides a motorcycle across New York with a pig carcass on his back, and more.

The festival will be coming to New York from October 29 through November 2, Chicago from November 20 to 22, and Charleston in the spring. Most of the films in the New York lineup are short snippets and act more like visual retellings of recipes than full-length features. Then there's the longer documentary-like movies, like Finding Gaston, about Peruvian food culture.

"It makes perfect sense that food and film should go together," said George Motz, the director of the Food Film Festivals. "We show people the creative how-to. We teach people that they can make and eat food they never even imagined. When you teach someone how food gets to your plate we've done our job."

Of course, no Food Film Festival is complete without the food porn party — a party favorite that features short films with sultry shots of delicious food, as well as some burlesque. And this year's food porn party will be Halloween-themed.

"To me, food porn is any image or video that depicts food in an overtly gorgeous and drool-worthy way. It's not enough just to have a nice photo — it has to create a gut-level physical reaction in the viewer!" said Charles Grantham, who is the star of the food porn party, and acts in character as "food porn star," Larry Caldwell. "[My character] Larry Cauldwell has taken this one step further: by combining the sensory richness of amazing food with his own unique sex appeal, he tempts the viewer's appetite on many levels."

Get your tickets to the Food Film Festival here.

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Joanna Fantozzi is an Associate Editor with The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter@JoannaFantozzi