Rhino Souffle

Rhino Souffle” depicts the process of creating a souffle, from initial ingredient preparation to baking to final communal enjoyment, with a group of friends that includes JoAnn Elam, Chuck Kleinhans and Julia LeSage (founders of the cinema journal Jump Cut), and other unidentified participants. After the souffle goes into the oven, a sequence of calendar pages turning implies the passage of months’ time, but the film returns to indicate the same setting, suggesting the calendar pages are meant as a joke for the lengthy baking time. This group of friends and colleagues adopted the name “The Rhinos” after walking to a screening at Kartemquin Films on a cold winter evening, and having a group of kids throw snowballs at them and tell them that they looked like a group of rhinos. Kleinhans wrote in an email in 2017, before seeing this film again, “The souffle probably refers to a time when I was into making souffles for dinner: both savory and sweet ones.