Chef Vivian Howard
Last time we reported on local filmmaker Cynthia Hill’s latest project, a documentary food show, she was screening a few episodes at our Fresh Docs works-in-progress series, presented with the Southern Documentary Fund.
Now, Cynthia and crew have shot and edited thirteen episodes of A Chef’s Life, which will premiere on PBS stations beginning in September 2013. Weekly half-hour episodes will take viewers inside the life of Chef Vivian Howard, who, with her husband Ben Knight, left promising careers in Manhattan to return home and open a restaurant in small-town Eastern North Carolina. Six years in, Vivian and her restaurant, Chef & the Farmer, have won numerous accolades (including two years running as a James Beard Foundation Award semifinalist) but the challenges continue. As the series opens, Vivian and Ben are juggling the business with parenting their twins, and a fire has destroyed the restaurant’s kitchen.
Besides following Vivian and Ben as they run a high-pressure business and raise their kids, A Chef’s Life will introduce viewers to home cooks, gardeners, hunters, fishermen, beef, chicken and pork farmers, and wine and whiskey makers, drawn from every racial and social group—a network that has already provided sixty new jobs at local farms in an economically challenged region.
For more information on the show and on a crowdfunding effort to get Season 1 to the finish line, click here. Word is, there may be some sneak-preview screenings in Durham before the show airs on PBS; we’ll keep you posted.
A Chef’s Life is a project of the Southern Documentary Fund.
