WITH NOTHING BUT A CAMERA AND AN APPETITE, KEVIN LONGA BEGAN FILMING.
About the filmmaker
Food unites us. Kevin Longa explores human stories through the lens of our world’s cuisines. Currently he's creating TASTE — a short form documentary series that uncovers true stories of culinary risk-takers around the world. So far, Longa has filmed the series across 21 countries featuring people such as a pro-democracy activist chef in Myanmar, an organic escargot farmer in Vienna, an enterprising Vietnamese coffee entrepreneur with cerebral palsy, a Bhutanese chef who preserves nearly extinct ingredients in "the world's most isolated country," world-famous LGTBQ candy makers, cricket farmers in Thailand, native hunters in Borneo, former felons-turned-chefs and over 30 more. The series has earned 45 film festival acceptances, including Amazon Prime’s All Voices Film Festival, Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Devour! Film Festival, Guth Gafa International Documentary Film Festival, Food Film Festival Ukraine, Athens International Culinary Film Festival, Vero Beach Wine and Film Festival, Food Film Festival Berlin and dozens more. Select documentaries have been featured on Vimeo’s Video of the Week, Roku and Amazon Prime Video.
Driven by his own mixed-race identity and food story, Longa makes films through two uniting forces: food and stories. Rather than producing food documentaries that force a particular message, Longa reveals the personal stories of food makers worldwide, so that everybody can appreciate our world's diverse cultures.
Longa has made films ever since he was eight years old, but it wasn’t until he turned 11 that food entered his consciousness. Obesity plagued his childhood. When a nurse warned that he could develop type 2 diabetes, he re-examined his food through filmmaking. By the time he was in high school he created his first feature-length food documentary.
Longa worked for several years with AmeriCorps as a documentary filmmaker. He filmed with underserved communities and marginalized young adults who pursued culinary career paths. His film work promoted career and culinary education non-profits such as Sprouts Cooking Club and Beyond Emancipation. TASTE was selected for the Google Cloud Platform for Startups program. He participates weekly with Black Trans Liberation Kitchen and has provided one-on-one career mentorship and training for dozens of aspiring student filmmakers. He lives in NYC.
