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| A big thank you to all who attended our 2009 events. | ||
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| Welcome to the 2009 festival | ||
| Food feet not food miles We're borrowing the slogan of the Transition Town movement for this year's programme. What a difference a year makes! Twelve months ago the credit crunch was looming, but who could have foreseen the bank crashes and closures, the bonfire of the bonuses and the political fall-out. For many of us, the financial crisis has meant some serious rethinking about how and where we spend our money. Surveys have shown that while people have cut back on holidays and spending on clothes, there has been an increased interest in growing our own food, home cooking and eating with friends at home. Alongside this return to cooking from scratch, rather than buying ready meals or eating out, people have been buying food from local shops, rather than travelling to out of town stores. The Transition Town movement, which has many active local groups, including Poole, Shaftesbury, Dorchester, Sturminster Newton, Sherborne and Bridport, has calculated that for every £1 spent with a local business - independent shop, farm shop or other local trader - 80 pence stays in the local economy, compared with 20 pence for every £1 spent in the big retailers and supermarkets. Screen Bites this year welcomes more local food producers than ever to film and food evenings in 12 venues in rural Dorset and five in South Somerset. We are joined at several events by the National Trust, which this year is celebrating "Food Glorious Food." Our biggest ever event, Bite the Lighthouse, is an all-day celebration of food and film at Lighthouse, Poole's Centre for the Arts, with possibly Dorset's biggest ever producers market. The festival finale will be at Tarrant Keyneston, with a screening of the locally filmed cult success, Morris: A Life with Bells On, and some special guests. Extra this year is Barrington at Thanksgiving, a unique feast of film and seasonal food at the National Trust's Barrington Court in Somerset. Screen Bites is all about keeping it local - celebrating the distinctive culture and communities of the West Country. The Screen Bites Team |
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