“How to Make Sourdough Bread” by Michael Roberson
In this lush, impeccably made tutorial, a woman walks us through the intricate process of making whole grain sourdough bread at home. However, at some point during the process of making the levain for her dough, cracks begin to form at the seams. Though she endeavors to hold herself—and the tutorial—together, the seams ultimately burst open, and she’s thrust into a haunting spiral of terror, blurring the line between bread tutorial and uncanny nightmare.
FROM THE DIRECTOR
“There’s nothing better than stone-milled, whole grain, sourdough bread. The health benefits, the complexity, the deep connection to ancient traditions. I wanted to fully capture the process of Danielle making it, to introduce audiences to the myriad forces that shape a loaf of sourdough bread. * But I wanted to capture the process not as a traditional online tutorial but in something timeless and transcendent, breathtaking and beautiful, refining the form such as to bring to light the enigma of sourdough, to lay bare its ancient soul and provoke a sense of awe in the tutorial audience.
But as we shot the film, cracks etched away at the seams. “For not are these but Lilliputian in their very nature?“ I reflected. It turns out they were not. Both the baker and the form itself began to crumble. The artifice of tutorial began to give under its own inflated weight. The intensive process of baking whole grain sourdough bread is already formidable in its execution, as Danielle had documented up to that point. Yet little were we prepared for the arduous journey of artificially packaging that process for hungry remote viewers, how the heavy freight of keeping a particular persona and appearance might prove too onerous a proposition for one baker to bear. And so I, the Director, wondered, if we pushed that to its limit—if we aimed for the perfect tutorial—what kind of darkness would we unleash?
What began as an online tutorial transmogrified into the terrible beauty of documentary, an unsparing glimpse deep into the soul of a troubled baker who, with bittersweet resolve, endeavored simply to provide audiences with deep tutelage on How to Make Sourdough Bread.”
-Michael Roberson
CREDITS
Writer, Director, Cinematographer and Editor// Michael Roberson
Writer and Star// Danielle Adelman
Post Sound Mixer// Daniel Miller
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