Every culture carries its knowledge in a pot. In the hands of an elderly woman pressing fermented fish paste in Laos. In the voice of a man describing how his grandmother made the sauce that could only be made in one season, from one plant, gathered in one particular way. In the smell of a wood fire and the precise sequence of movements that no written recipe has ever fully captured.
What the project is
The Memory of Food is a long-form documentary series documenting the living culinary knowledge of cultures around the world, with a particular focus on the practitioners who hold it: the elderly, the rural, the unrecognised. Through documentary film, photography, and deep ethnographic research, the project builds a record of what is at risk of disappearing within a generation, and asks what it means to lose it.
Each episode is rooted in immersive fieldwork: weeks or months spent inside a specific food culture, following the people who still practise what their grandparents taught them, learning the names of plants, the timing of harvests, the rituals attached to a particular dish. The camera follows the hands. The research follows the history. The result is a body of work that is simultaneously documentary, archive, and argument.
The argument
Culinary knowledge is not simply a collection of recipes. It is an ecological intelligence, a social architecture, a way of understanding a landscape and the people who belong to it. When it disappears, it does not leave a gap. It leaves an absence so complete that the next generation does not know what they have lost.
The Memory of Food exists to document it before that happens.
The work so far
Over more than two decades of immersive field research across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean, the project's founding researcher has documented culinary practices in Japan, South Africa, Zanzibar, Laos, Thailand, and Réunion. That fieldwork is gathered in the book What the Hands Remember: Six Encounters with Living Culinary Knowledge, which serves as the research foundation for the documentary series.
What comes next
The Memory of Food is now entering its documentary phase. The first episode is in active pre-production. Subsequent episodes will expand the geographic and cultural scope of the archive, building a body of work that is as ambitious in its reach as it is precise in its attention to the particular.
Support the project
The Memory of Food is supported entirely by individuals who believe that this knowledge matters and that documentary is one of the most powerful tools available to preserve it. Every contribution, at any level, directly funds fieldwork, production, and the long-term archiving of what is documented.
If you would like to receive updates on the project's progress, or to discuss partnership or institutional support, please write to: nadege@cookandconnect.com
For US-based donors
The Memory of Food is fiscally sponsored through the International Documentary Association (IDA), a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Donations made through this link are tax-deductible in the United States.
For donors outside the United States
Please write directly to discuss how to contribute. All donations are handled transparently, with a full record provided, and your support will be acknowledged in the project's documentation.
