A love story that started with a woman and a dream, and over the course of twenty years, grew between chef & artist, employer & employee, a restaurant & its community, art & food, inviting us, along the way, to rediscover the vital nature of human connection.
This film is a love story.
How DO you feed an artist?
For twenty years, the trailblazing, glass-ceiling shattering, protagonist of our story, Mary Haglund, used her restaurant to feed the artists of her community, (Winston-Salem, NC) not just by employing them, but went above & beyond in supporting their artistic careers. The rich tale of Mary, the woman, the anti-myth, the legend, the housewife-turned-restaurant-owning chef, shows us how, through chasing her dream of changing people’s lives by cooking food for the soul, her own life was changed by the artists she fed.
Alright, where are our fellow working artists at?!
In many ways, this story is an honest & personal love letter to the restaurant industry for how it becomes a literal life line for so many in the art community. An overwhelming number of emerging and even experienced, recognized artists cannot survive on commission from their art alone & have to take on other jobs, many finding themselves in the food service industry. Anyone heavily relate? Haha, we thought so. Mary's diner is the ultimate example of a family-owned restaurant that embraced the artistic community, then became the artistic community.
As we know, no one can truly survive with out art and the artists that create it. Try not wearing clothes, not listening to music, not watching film, not reading or even talking for that matter, not living in buildings or looking at paintings or sculpture or so they think they can dance, not eating food you didn’t make on the plates you didn’t make.
As we said: a love story.