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Tunde Wey: Hard To Swallow
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TYPE: Documentary
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Pre-Production
LOGLINE
Despite chef Tunde Wey’s exceptional taste and undeniable grace, this documentary about food and politics may be… Hard To Swallow.
SYNOPSIS
Chef Tunde Wey hits the 2020 campaign trail using food as an entrée to more honest discussion of American politics. Visiting voters, local leaders, surrogates, theorists, pollsters, media folks and candidates, Tunde orchestrates unprecedented dialogue between opposing parties over dinner. His ultimate goal is to host the final presidential candidates.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
Over the last few years of political turmoil, America seems to be as divided as ever. Yet, Tunde Wey, a naturalized citizen from Nigeria, sees the exact opposite. Says the chef and writer about his intentions for the proposed documentary: “I don’t want to explore love so much as I want to explore sacrifice. What are folks willing to sacrifice to get what they want? I also want to examine the American political character. My thesis, which is hard to swallow, is that there is more unity than disparity between these two groups. They are more partisan to the American supremacist ideology than their parties. This ideology says America is a force of good in the world rather than a destabilizing force. America is a stabilizing force in that its presence is necessary to keep the destabilized order running or else chaos will ensue. In fact patriotism is the greatest love, not party. But this doesn’t mean that each party isn’t fiercely partisan and might jeopardize national interests to win, it just means they feel their perspective is the most patriotic But there is a material difference between these two parties: A more robust welfare state vs not, Pro-immigration vs not, Pro-choice vs pro life, Gun control. Yet I am not convinced the ideological differences are superficial because a much more obdurate foundation of violence and extraction unites America.
KEY CREW
Theo Schear - Director, DP, Editor
Theo Anthony Schear is a 27-year-old filmmaker from Oakland, CA. Schear received a BA in Screen Arts & Cultures from the University of Michigan and was a member of Detroit Public Television's National Documentary Unit, where he served as Media Producer for the Detroit Journalism Cooperative. His work includes Open Letter, a found-footage doc about Frank Ocean; Picture Character, a documentary about emoji that premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival; and The ReDream Project, which earned a Mid-America Emmy. He has filmed the NBA playoffs for the Golden State Warriors, and has produced a Nike campaign and a Brita commercial featuring Stephen Curry. His journalistic work has appeared in publications such as Juxtapoz, SFMOMA's Open Space, Film Threat, and Deadspin.
Tunde Wey - Talent
Tunde Wey is a Nigerian born-and-raised, New Orleans-based artist, cook and writer who uses Nigerian food and dining spaces to interrogate systems of power. He have been featured in The New York Times, NPR, GQ, The Washington Post, VOGUE, Black Enterprise, Food and Wine, and his writing has appeared in the Oxford American, Boston Globe, and San Francisco Chronicle.
Jenny 8. Lee - EP
Jennifer 8. Lee is co-founder and CEO of Plympton, a San Francisco-based literary studio that innovates in digital publishing. A former New York Times reporter, Jenny is a producer of “The Search for General Tso,” a documentary that premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, and the author of the New York Times-bestselling book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (Twelve, 2008). She is the founder of Emojicon and MisinfoCon.
Jenny also serves on the boards for the Nieman Foundation, the Center for Public Integrity, the Digital Public Library of America, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Hacks/Hackers, as well as committees for the New York Public Library Young Lions committee, the Robert F. Kennedy journalism awards, and SXSW programming.
Jenny has served as the lead judge for the $25 million Knight News Challenge, and on the launch team for Upworthy. She discovered fortune cookies were originally Japanese, and coined the term "man date."
She is the founder of Emojination, a grassroots group whose motto is "Emoji by the people, for the people." As part of that organization, she successfully lobbied for a dumpling and hijab emojis. She is the vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.
Jenny graduated with a degree in Applied Math and Economics from Harvard, where she was vice president of The Harvard Crimson.
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