Carlin the partisan and the Slow Food philosophy
The Langhe and the Roero are also the areas where the Slow Food movement was born, which Stefano Sardo recounts with great passion in his film Slow Food Story (2013). It is the story of an unfolding revolution, that of Slow Food, the international movement founded by Carlin Petrini that has been on the march for over 25 years, a gastronomic movement now present in over 150 countries. The film recounts its establishment in Bra, its roots in Carlin Petrini’s political militancy and the foundation of ArciGola in 1986, the association which would produce the Slow Food Project three years later.
The International Movement for the Defence of and the Right to Pleasure was announced on 10 December 1989 at the Opera-Comique in Paris with the following manifesto:
«Born and nurtured under the sign of Industrialization, this century first invented the machine and then modelled its lifestyle after it.
Speed became our shackles. We fell prey to the same virus: 'the fast life' that fractures our customs and assails us even in our own homes, forcing us to ingest “fast- food”.
Homo sapiens must regain its wisdom and liberate itself from the 'velocity' that is propelling it on the road to extinction.
Let us defend ourselves against the universal madness of 'the fast life' with tranquil material pleasure.
Against those – or, rather, the vast majority – who confuse efficiency with frenzy, we propose the vaccine of an adequate portion of sensual gourmandise pleasures, to be taken with slow and prolonged enjoyment.
Appropriately, we will start in the kitchen, with Slow Food. To escape the tediousness of "fast-food", let us rediscover the rich varieties and aromas of local cuisines.
In the name of productivity, the 'fast life' has changed our lifestyle and now threatens our environment and our land (and city) scapes. Slow Food is the alternative, the avant-garde’s riposte.
Real culture is to be found here. First of all, we can begin by cultivating taste, rather than impoverishing it, by stimulating progress, by encouraging international exchange programs, by endorsing worthwhile projects, by advocating historical food culture and by defending old-fashioned food traditions. Slow Food assures us of a better-quality lifestyle and future.
With a snail purposely chosen as its patron and symbol, it is an idea and a way of life that needs much sure but steady support».
This is a sort of anti-Futurist manifesto that balances Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism with the idea of a long-unfolding slowness that links to the future through the sustainable development of ancient knowledge traditions of farming and food. Carlin Petrini’s movement has a partisan lexicon, using terminology from the workers struggles and peasant farming tradition in its battles. And so, words such as “Terra Madre”, “condotte”, “presidio” have entered the vocabularies of millions of people. The condotte are the territorial groups of Slow Food, the presidi the autochthonous territorial products in need of protection from massification, intense over-farming, pesticide use, the abuse of underpaid manual labour and, above all, to preserve their biodiversity. For over 25 years, Slow Food has worked to promote biodiversity, the right of peoples to food sovereignty and as a defence against mass farming, genetic modification and the standardisation of knowledge and flavours. If, today, awareness that the principles governing food should be good clean fair has spread across the dining areas of many citizens in the world, this is above all thanks to Slow Food and the partisan Carlin Petrini.
