Review of Kitchen Stories (2003) by Liliana C — 01 Jan 2010

Wow!! This film was a pleasant surprise for me, it is thought-provoking, pure genious and quirky. Kitchen stories has many dimensions to it, but I will focus on the "research experiment" to map out the kitchen routines of single men in Norway.

The film reveals the difficulties researchers face when doing ethnography, giving the idealized ethical claims and demands of the positivist approach imposed by the research project. This film shows how difficult is to report the whole picture of what it is being observed, many important clues are missing, despite researcher's claims that field notes are data and reflect "what it really happened".

It points to the fact that the presence of the researcher always have an effect on the research subject, leading to collaboration or resistance. The film also highlights that when ethnographers participate within the field, they invariably develop relationships with research subjects/participants as it happened to Folke and Isak in this film.

These relationships are sometimes not accounted for within the reporting of the ethnography despite the fact that they seemingly would influence the research findings. The story takes a surpringly funny turn, when the researcher, Folke, becomes the research subject of the research subject, Ilke.

While this film is not intended for mass audiences, I do recommend the film for intellectual minds and for the classroom at university level. I think it will help to visualize students the difficulties of the research pursuit, in a way that thousand of readings can't.

I would say this film should be mandatory to any research methods class. I will give 5 stars out of 5. Pure genious!