First We Eat

Suzanne Crocker’s film presents the experiment undertaken by her and her five-member family who live on Canada’s outer edge. Is it possible to survive for a full year in a sub-arctic town using only local foodstuffs? Homemade cheese. Sugar from birch sap. Salt from ashes, blood or boiled clay. When a landslide cuts off a small remote town for a while, Suzanne realises the fragility of the supply economy they are dependant on. She, her husband and their three children conduct an experiment: to live for an entire year using only what they grow, catch or can obtain from local sources. Luckily, some other members of the local community have experience with growing things, and so the film’s protagonists have someone to turn to. How does this drastic change affect them? Is their inventive, but strenuous, discovery of local abundance successful? Or has the family bitten off more than they can chew? (One World)