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created about 1 year ago | Tagged: |
2martens
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Vegucated, a new documentary that follows three everyday people who go vegan for six weeks, got a standing ovation at the Toronto Independent Film Festival this week. The movie was a labor of love for director Marisa Miller Wolfson (pictured), who took time from her hectic schedule to tell Epi about musician Moby's involvement in the film, why she decided to make a movie about veganism in the first place, and where people can catch a screening.
What made you decide to tackle veganism in a documentary, and especially using the story of three, er, raw recruits? I'm a strong believer in the power of documentary film. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a documentary is worth a million. It was during a documentary screening that I had an aha moment to go vegetarian, and then in a documentary that I had another aha moment to make this film. I was sitting in Super Size Me aeons ago and thought, If Morgan Spurlock uses a vegan diet to detox from his burger binge, wouldn't it be interesting to see the reverse of this in a documentary? What if we saw a typical bacon cheeseburger-loving American and had them go vegan for a set time? The seed was planted.
Going from bacon to vegan sounds pretty drastic -- why vegan and not vegetarian? From a storytelling standpoint, going vegetarian isn't as sexy or dramatic, because about a tenth of the America population already identifies at such. From an activist standpoint, veganism is more consistent with my ethical and environmental ideals. Plus, vegans have lower rates of the top killer diseases in the U.S., so veganism is win-win-win.
Where can people catch the film? We're planning the U.S. premiere in NYC in mid-October, then tour it to select cities before we release the film digitally and on DVD before the holidays. People can sign up for film updates at GetVegucated.com.
Vegucated is a guerrilla-style documentary that follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers who agree to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks. There’s Brian, the bacon-loving bachelor who eats out all the time, Ellen, the single mom who prefers comedy to cooking, and Tesla, the college student who avoids vegetables and bans beans.
