Amilkar Pichardo

Octavio Esparza

Alejandro Carrera

3 friends attempt to cook a steak after a long day in school

The cooking show is as old as television itself. But why do we like watching the making of a meal that most of us will never cook, let alone eat? Dirty Furniture’s jam-packed video essay is a rollercoaster ride through the history of the genre, at once a staple of television viewing and a hotpot of shifting perspectives and sociocultural values.

If you think a peeled tomato is the daughter of a Brazilian footballer, a crusty sea bass is a bad coffee and cumin is an inappropriate gesture: look no further, you're hopeless in the kitchen! This video is for you. The kitchendales, three handsome, athletic, funny, nice boys, will initiate you and teach you simple and fast recipes.

Down-on-their luck brothers, Lars and Ernie Smuntz, aren't happy with the crumbling old mansion they inherit... until they discover the estate is worth millions. Before they can cash in, they have to rid the house of its single, stubborn occupant—a tiny and tenacious mouse.

It's evening, and she is standing happily at a work table in her kitchen, perhaps making a cake, while the radio finishes a song for young lovers. Then, the 7 o'clock news begins with a report on an arrest in Israel. As she proceeds through a couple of kitchen accidents - dropping a bowl, pulling a smoking pan from the oven, and waving the smoke out the window of her fourth-floor flat - she realizes that the newscaster is informing listeners of her cooking disasters.

Catherine, a young British prostitute living in Paris, decides to start her own "company" after learning the basics of big businesscom from her clients. She encounters both interest and setbacks in her search for investors.

When Johnny is released from prison following a forgery charge, he quickly lands a job as a short-order cook at a New York diner. Following a brief fling with waitress Cora, he develops an attraction for Cora's friend and fellow waitress Frankie. While Frankie resists Johnny's charms initially, she eventually relents when her best friend, Tim, persuades her to give Johnny a chance.

Master chef Kate Armstrong runs her life and her kitchen with intimidating intensity. However, a recipe for disaster may be in the works when she becomes the guardian of her young niece while crossing forks with the brash sous-chef who just joined her staff. Though romance blooms in the face of rivalry, Kate needs to look outside the kitchen to find true happiness.

Martha is a single woman who lives for one passion: cooking. The head chef at a chic restaurant, Martha has no time for anything - or anyone - else. But Martha's solitary life is shaken when a fateful accident brings her sister's eight-year-old daughter, Lina, to her doorstep.