'Food for thought': filmic recipes for New Zealand's multiculturalism

Through the analysis of Fleeting Beauty (2004) by Virginia Pitts, Eating Sausage (2004) by Zia Mandviwalla and Coffee and Allah (2007) by Sima Urale, three short films whose plots revolve around food and drink, I consider recent debates concerning Aotearoa/New Zealand's increasing ethnic and cultural diversity and its filmic representations. My argument is that these films can be read metaphorically as attempts to nourish current social and political discussions about the incorporation of the multicultural ingredient' into the official bicultural recipe', rejecting the superficial celebrations of culinary difference often found in multicultural schemes. These works reflect a range of diasporic experiences using ethnic food and drink to bypass cosmopolitan patterns of consumption and announce the potential of food preparation and sharing for the establishment of intercultural communication and viable multicultural formulae.