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Mondovino

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For ‘Mondovino’ director, glass is half empty - MORE MOVIE NEWS AND FEATURES - MSNBC.com. ‘Mondovino’ pokes holes in wine’s mystique - Today: Wine - MSNBC.com. A single shot in Jonathan Nossiter's “Mondovino” reveals its true focus. Patrick Léon, co-CEO of wine producer Mouton-Rothschild, chattily describes his company's prowess, but the camera focuses on a worker tinkering with a gutter in the background. Léon may be in the picture, but the real action lies with the guy who's getting his hands dirty. Nossiter sets up this split again and again: a proud peasant sensibility that he connects to the soul of winemaking versus modern corporate interests and their global reach, which he views as wine's greatest threat. It's no surprise, then, that he chooses early on to feature Battista Columbu of Sardinia, who describes his work with the malvasia grape as an “ethical commitment,” a broadside against global consumerism's vast powers. “Poor people also have the right” to make wine, Columbu insists.

While "Sideways" has gotten all the attention, a very different film is setting some big names in the wine world on edge. Can you find the wine? Boston Phoenix: Interview with Jonathan Nossiter. JONATHAN NOSSITER is on a tear, railing against homogenization, globalization, civil liberties. Think he’s talking politics? Think again: Nossiter is talking about wine. And that’s exactly the point. The state of the wine world, the filmmaker and former sommelier argues, is a clear reflection of the state of culture in a post-Reagan society — a troubling mirror, worries Nossiter, who maintains that "we’re living in a very black time.

" In his challenging new documentary, Mondovino, Nossiter takes viewers across three continents and deep into the heart of the warring wine world, a world fraught with conflict between billionaire businesses and peasant producers, commerce and culture, modernity and tradition. The result? Says Nossiter, "I think it’s a complicated picture of the human side of globalization. " Q: How’d you get interested in wine in the first place? Q: Is this the film that you originally set out to make? Q: I read a quote where you said, "This is not a film about wine. " Documentary 'Mondovino' Dips into Global Wine Industry. Mondovino.