PBS version of PolyCultures now available FREE online!

From 2008 to 2010 I had the good fortune to collaborate with Tom Kondilas of LESS Productions and Brad Masi of the New Agrarian Center on a documentary movie about the remarkable local food movement around Cleveland, Ohio.

To my knowledge PolyCultures is the first and perhaps only documentary that takes a comprehensive look at a single region's local food system and the mix of communities involved in creating it.  It features tours of area farms, innovative programs in urban areas, and commentary from national experts like Michael Pollan, David Orr, and Rep. Marcy Kaptur.

The 100-minute director's cut of PolyCultures: Food Where We Live debuted in March 2009 to sold-out crowds at the 33rd Cleveland International Film Festival.  DVDs followed a few months later - 5 years ago, today, in fact.

The following year we produced a half-as-long version of PolyCultures so WVIZ/PBS ideastream could televise it right before the national PBS premiere of Food Inc.

Now we're celebrating the 5-year anniversary and making that version freely available to all!

53-min. PBS version

Also, we cut the PBS version into two parts - one for those most interested in solutions to urban food deserts (which premiered at the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Fest in 2010)...

Part 1 of 2: Fresh Food in the City of Cleveland

...and another for those looking to learn more about the ecological alternatives to our country's industrial food system.

Part 2 of 2: Ecological Agriculture in Northeast Ohio

If you like what you see and are interested in the original 100-minute cut, you can still purchase that on DVD for educational, library, or personal use by clicking here.  Also, there you can contact LESS Productions if you have interest in publicly screening any of the shorter cuts.

Certainly local food around Cleveland has evolved greatly since PolyCultures was filmed in 2007 and 2008, but having recently re-watched it I feel the overarching themes ring true and may resonate beyond the local food movement itself.  It's all about being industrious and living in tune with nature - with some good tunes playing in the background, naturally!

Whatever your level of interest in local food, I hope you'll be interested to give PolyCultures a watch... and to let others know what you think in the comments below.

PolyCultures: 3 Cuts Available Online

Filmmaker David Pearl Presents

April 28th at 7:30p

Wild Willow Farm in San Diego

More Info          PDF Flyer

I'm happy to announce the San Diego Premiere of PolyCultures: Food Where We Live.  This will be a very special screening!  It's the kick-off to this year's Cultivating Food Justice week.  It's also the 15th event in "Food for Thought," San Diego Roots' film series - and the first to be introduced by one of the filmmakers.

It's an honor to be involved in this project - for those reasons, and also because it's a homecoming of sorts for me.  I lived in San Diego for five years (until 2008), at first as a line cook and then developing a strong interest in sustainable agriculture while doing a tech job downtown.  Acting on that interest, I spent the next three years in my hometown Cleveland, first collaborating with Director Tom Kondilas and Executive Producer Brad Masi to make this documentary, and later coordinating the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition.  Cleveland will always be in my heart, but it feels great to be back in California and seeing some of the many inspiring projects happening out here through that lens (so to speak).

If you're in San Diego, I hope you'll consider joining us April 28th at Wild Willow Farm.  This will be about the 20th time I've presented PolyCultures, and the first time I've screened it on a farm.  Wood-fired pizza, good people, warm spring weather (hopefully!), localism in action - what more could you want?

For details click here.  For clips and trailers, see the post right below...

Spreading the seeds further...

If you haven't seen it before - and especially if you have - I encourage you to sit back and enjoy this movie trailer / music video put together by PolyCultures director Tom Kondilas.  It's an achingly good song, and from the images and lyrics a distinct narrative arc emerges:

PolyCultures has spread the message of the "seamless web of sustainability" further than we could have predicted:

• Premiered at the 33rd Cleveland International Film Festival to a hometown crowd of 1000
• Official Selection of the largest environmental film fest, Wild & Scenic 
• Featured in the first film festival at the Community Food Security Coalition's renowned food justice conference
• Screened in over a dozen states/countries (see the 2009 and 2010 lists to the right)
• Aired by Cleveland PBS affiliate WVIZ along with the national premiere of Food Inc. to commemorate Earth Day 2010

It's been viewed by over 10,000 - many of whom were inspired to do a little more (or a lot more!) to create an all-around healthier food system.

I think it's easy enough to see why when you watch this trailer highlighting the "problem > solution > action" theme of PolyCultures:

By the way, the music at the start there is gritty on purpose, just like we intentionally left in the endearing intro to the Harold Hartzler section everyone seems to love best:

A lot of people who support that kind of sustainably-produced food have the means to do so and an increasing number of options available.  But how many people in poverty-stricken areas with limited food access could use to see the poignant message that in many locations the food system may be convenient but is actually pretty messed up... and to also see efforts happening around them that could soon be reversing that trend...

How many college libraries out there could put a couple copies of the DVD in circulation, giving many different types of courses an engaging teaching aid...?  How many public libraries could lend a copy to community members who might be inspired to join a garden or host a CSA program...?

We want more people who see these clips or have caught a public screening to get a home-use copy and later lend it to friends... or maybe even think about setting up their own public screening.

Here are some ideas on how you might screen it.  Since writing that last July it's been on PBS, sold a number of public-use copies, been reviewed in the Ethicurean, and been screened over a dozen times across the country.

But forget the accolades - what could be more compelling than watching the first few minutes for free and deciding if you want to see the rest...?

Two Big PolyCultures Screenings This Spring

After a long and somewhat trying winter, it seems PolyCultures is back on the scene.  

Wednesday April 21 at 8p PolyCultures is slated to play before Food Inc. on WVIZ PBS Cleveland!  Though some clips of the movie have been seen on television before this will be the official broadcast premiere of the latest 54-minute version of the movie (it's probably the best version:)!  

Here's WVIZ's link for that.

You can also hear Maurice Small on 90.3's Around Noon Tuesday April 20th, check this link for that.

Michael Carissimi and Tom Kondilas also worked on a new 30 second promo that will be aired on PBS for the week preceding the show.

Whole Foods is also sponsoring a theatrical screening as part of its Let's Retake Our Plates Film Series.  The 54-minute cut will play on April 30 at about ~7:00p for FREE at Lakewood Public Library - 15425 Detroit Avenue, Lakewood, OH.  Here's a Plain Dealer article about the series written by Kaye Spector.

Sprouting Through the Snow: A Batch of Mid-Winter Screenings

I recently experienced an absolutely fantastic festival: Wild & Scenic. It takes place each year in the former gold mining town of Nevada City, California - and it's become the largest environmental film fest in the US. So I had the chance to see over a dozen feature-length and short films about topics ranging from the pending world-wide shortage of fresh water, climbing stunning peaks in Namibia, and mushrooms.

I also had the opportunity to present PolyCultures in two historic venues...



...and give an interview that was streamed live and can be watched in its entirety here - about the movie and, more importantly, the movement in Northeast Ohio to provide impoverished neighborhoods with better food choices.

And all of this took place amid friendly folks strolling through the town from one venue to another, stopping here and there at unique restaurants and quaint gift shops. Doesn't get much better than Wild & Scenic!

While out in California, we received word that PolyCultures is an Official Selection of the Phangan Film Festival being held this February in Thailand. We're also part of the Frozen River Film Festival up in Minnesota, playing next weekend. On top of that, PolyCultures will be part of Case Western Reserve University Film Society's 6th Annual Local Filmmaker’s Night on Saturday, February 6th - great to be doing more with Tom's and my alma mater.

So, while we semi-hibernate on the distribution this winter, it's great to see that there's still interest in the documentary near and far. We have some big plans in the works for a spring-time relaunch... to coincide with the new growing season, of course.

Dec. 10th screening at Rocky River Nature Center -- UPDATE!! Big River added to the bill

That's a pic I snapped just outside the Rocky River Nature Center while attending their FREE four-part Bringing Nature Home Food Film Fest in October, where we shared trailers from PolyCultures and participated in after-film discussions. The festival has been extended to include PolyCultures on Thursday, December 10th from 7-9 PM!

Also, If you've seen PolyCultures, chances are you've seen or at least heard about King Corn. A couple months ago I had the good fortune to bump into and then chat with one of the filmmakers behind King Corn. This has led to the dual bill of their new project Big River alongside the freshly-released PBS cut of PolyCultures!

Rocky River Nature Center is located at 24000 Valley Parkway, between Cedar Point Road and Shepard Lane in North Olmsted. For more information, call 440-734-6660.

PolyCultures Tremont Screening Hosted By Tremont Farmers Market @ Pilgrim Church

NEO Premiere of v1.2 @ 17:00 2009-10-23 @ CSU: The Social Media & Sustainability Conversations

Why I Care About Social Media
As you may or may not be aware, the promotion and distribution of PolyCultures has thus far been executed with virtually no budget. The modest success we've experienced thus far has been largely affected through the use of social media (and of course the serious and virtually unpaid efforts of Tom and myself, Brad, and countless others). Specifically, we've employed: this blog, our LocalFoodCleveland group, our Facebook group, our email mailing list (are you on it? Contact Us if not), several trailers and clips on YouTube, LinkedIn profiles (as you'll see littered - er, linked throughout this post) and of course Tom's Twitter feed.

This process has sparked in me a serious interest in the use of social media to advance sustainability and civic efforts - reaching far beyond just our little local food movie. It also led to me having some very interesting conversations with Mike Gesing, an internet consultant and founder of the Northeast Ohio Citizens League. The mission of the NEOCL is to create a new regional civic space, empowering citizens to reinvent Northeast Ohio by educating and engaging them in the community decision-making process. A big piece of that is creating original video to share ideas on what is happening in NEO and what could be.


Bioneers Cleveland / River's Edge / Levin College Forum present PolyCultures v1.2

So I thought I'd unite a bunch of interests and opportunities by assembling a panel at a screening who can connect PolyCultures, social media, and the NEOCL through a conversation I can help lead.

Bioneers Cleveland will present the screening (official flyer), which will take place in Dively Auditorium at CSU's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs (1717 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH, 44115) this Friday, October 23rd at 5pm. It will be co-sponsored by the Levin College Forum and River's Edge. It's FREE. (Donations to Bioneers will be happily accepted.) We'll be premiering a 56-minute cut of PolyCultures (v1.2.0) that we recently assembled for PBS audiences (see post directly below for more info). Except I'll be showing that cut in two parts....

v1.2.2 plus George Nemeth & Marianne Eppig
The first ~27-minute screening is about the problems with conventional agriculture, ecological agriculture as an alternative to that, and a look at how that alternative is being brought to scale. Following this screening I'll lead a discussion between:

Marianne Eppig
&
George Nemeth

George and Marianne are both professional experts in the use of social media to communicate about civic and sustainability issues. I think they'll help the audience get a solid grounding in what we mean by the term "social media," and that can help us get into how it can be used for the betterment of urban NEO - both in terms of scaling sustainability in general as well as PolyCultures in specific.

v1.2.1 plus David DuBois & Marc Canter
Then we'll watch the other ~27-minute cut, which is about food access issues in low-income areas and solutions to that, such as City Fresh and urban gardening. Following this screening I'll lead a discussion between:

Marc Canter
&
David DuBois

Marc and David are both in the process of applying their vast skillsets to the design of social programs that aim to improve the lives of low-income, underprivileged individuals through job creation/training. I'd like to get their thoughts on how PolyCultures, online social networks, and other social media can be used to help achieve that end.

The Team on the Fringes
NEOCL will be on hand to document the event with video - and hopefully we'll hear a bit from the Executive Director Mike about his role in the pending launch of NEOhio.org as a "virtual commons" for the region.

We'll be honored to have the Executive Producer of PolyCultures, Brad Masi - inarguably a pioneer in the use of social media to communicate messages of sustainability and civic participation - on hand to help introduce the movie and the discussion.

Plus, the Director Tom Kondilas and I have hatched/hashed plans for me to pre-record a discussion between him and Jody Lathwell, the manager of the Tremont Farmers Market who is bringing a simultaneous PolyCultures premiere of v1.2 to Pilgrim Church. If this happens and I/we have time to edit it into a good piece, we'll have to figure out where in the program to fit it... by default let's say at the start. So that could be a pretty sweet component as well.

Connecting two faith-sponsored screenings of this new version in a Mollison/Holmgren-like way that incorporates live media with social networking - and taking a new stab at good food education in the process. In the words of Benny in Basquiat, "What more you want?"

Your Role
I really think you should join us if you can - did I mention it's FREE?! And please come prepared to participate....

After all, this whole thing ultimately comes down to the citizens.

Mega-Update!!

As you've likely noticed, TK and I have recently produced a flurry of blog content. What we haven't done for a while though is give a comprehensive update on this whole project - not since I posted The Résumé back in July! So here goes...


New Product Line - Version 1.2
We recently produced a 53:30 version of PolyCultures in hopes of being included in PBS' Independent Lens series. We're inserting 2:30 of "value added" on the edges and calling it the 56-minute cut (i.e. the length it'll be if/when it airs). This cut obviously does not have the depth of its 100-minute predecessor (v1.1), but the core messages are retained and the flow is much better - it's much more enjoyable, if I do say so myself ;-)

In the process we kicked out two other cuts that are each about 27 minutes long. The first is about urban food access issues and solutions to that, such as City Fresh and urban gardening. The second is about the problems with conventional agriculture, ecological agriculture as an alternative to that, and a look at how that alternative is being brought to scale. We think these cuts are great as an introduction to either subject and should fit well within a single class period for high schools or colleges. By the way, the movie is already being used in curriculum by such fine area schools as Case Western Reserve University, Gilmore Academy, and Padua Franciscan High School.

At present we have just home-burned DVDs of these new cuts, but we're happy to make any of them available to parties who wish to purchase a public screening license.


Public Screenings
Speaking of screenings, we've had quite a few of them recently. In fact, in the months of August, September, and October we will have had 13 screenings that were presented by Tom, Brad, and/or myself in such locations as: Des Moines, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Athens, Youngstown, Oberlin, and of course several neighborhoods around Cleveland. In addition, there have been invite-only screenings in Chicago and San Diego - the latter was at a sustainable seafood restaurant called Sea Rocket Bistro, and here are a couple pics from the event:



Check out the "Recent Screenings" section to the right for details on each of these events. And definitely check out the "Upcoming Screenings" to the right for our upcoming screenings in Cleveland and California!


Food & Environmental Film Festivals
It was an honor to be a part of the film festival at what must be the nation's largest sustainable food conference in Des Moines (see my three-part series below). And it's going to be an honor to be a part of the nation's largest environmental film festival - PolyCultures has been chosen as an official selection for the 8th Annual Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival being held in Nevada City, CA on January 15-17, 2010! I'm hoping to be able to attend that one as well... looks like a great festival.

PolyCultures was an Official Web Selection of the 2009 Blue Planet Film Fest and recently received a 2009 Accolade Film Award.

Also, there's a great food film series going on Tuesdays this month at the Rocky River Nature Center, including The Future of Food, Fresh, King Corn, and Super Size Me. Tom and I have been going out to see these (again), sell PolyCultures DVDs, and show our trailers in promotion of our upcoming December screening at the Nature Center.


Addressing Food Gaps in Urban Areas
Tom and I both live in the heart of urban Cleveland and know how difficult it is to get fresh, healthy food nearby. We recently shot some footage of an area grocery store that was abandoned, resulting in a food vacuum in that community. We've incorporated this new footage into a new 5-minute piece on food deserts.

This coincides with a presentation we recently gave to the Cleveland Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition, in conjunction with Jenita McGowan's presentation of her related research in urban neighborhoods.

It seems from several recent comments on our About the Movie page that people are really digging City Fresh as a solution in underserved neighborhoods.

Along these lines, here's an insightful essay on the topic of urban farms that happens to mention PolyCultures, recently written by Marianne Eppig for her fine blog Renovating the Rust Belt.


Randomness
Here's a little treat for making it to the end of this post. I found this bizarro site while fishing for PolyCultures stuff. My favorites include "polycultures food where we live: you will not seem the show of reasons that wonder like word tried that church for potential" and "Polycultures food where we live: enrique vergara, the responsibility of the american santo works, drew to happen by road phone blue demon a art of his own." As well, I learned that "Polycultures food where we live: there are other placing prizes in the 56k." Can't argue with that reasoning.

Dual Premier of the 56-Minute Cut

We here at LESS Productions have recently been throwing our all into a 53:30 version of PolyCultures in hopes of being part of PBS' Independent Lens series. We're inserting 2:30 of "value added" on the edges and calling it the 56-minute cut (i.e. the length it'll be if/when it airs). This cut obviously does not have the depth of its predecessor, but the core messages are retained and the flow is much better - it's much more enjoyable, if I do say so myself ;-)

We're going to do the Cleveland premiere of this cut in two simultaneous screenings!

Both will start around 6p on Friday, October 23rd, so please save the date. We're still nailing down some of the details. But here are the basics:

Screening #1: Tremont Farmers Market presents PolyCultures v1.2 at Pilgrim Church in Tremont

Screening #2: Bioneers presents PolyCultures v1.2 in the Dively Auditorium in CSU's Levine College of Urban Affairs in downtown Cleveland

We hope whether you've seen the 100-minute cut or not that you'll be interested in participating in the evolution of this community-integrated project. Check back here in a day or two for full details!

"In the age of Van Jones, nothing is ephemeral": Live-Blogging the 13th Annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference - Day 3

I've been getting up way too early for this thing.

Anyway, that title quote comes from a session on social media at the conference this morning, from a person whose name I'll withhold for obvious/meta reasons.

If you want some names though, here are a couple: Curt Ellis and Tom Vilsack.

Curt's (and Ian's) work has been a major inspiration for me the last couple years, and actually the title screen for PolyCultures is an homage to the title screen in King Corn. As a filmmaker and a fellow for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Curt was perhaps the person I was most hoping to meet at the conference. So I was disappointed to not see him on the roster or floating around the conference... until I sat down for an end-of-the-day lecture in the main hall and realized he literally was sitting right in front of me. He then got up to leave, and I scrambled to hand him a gratis DVD of PolyCultures and introduce myself (in that order, heh). I asked if he would mind stepping out and chatting with me for a bit, and he actually seemed happy to do so. We ended up talking for more than half an hour, mainly about strategies deployed and lessons learned with King Corn that may apply to our distribution of PolyCultures - but also fanning out into other things, like his new project Big River, which was a last-minute addition to the film festival that night (which unfortunately I wasn't able to stick around for, but that I'm excited to see and quite possibly champion). Great guy, great interaction - called Tom immediately and told him "mission accomplished."

Another late addition to the program was a speech from the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and former governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack. He addressed the whole conference about what is happening at a federal level to promote the types of programs that those of us at this conference are behind. I found it informative, particularly their freshly-unveiled "Know your farmer, know your food" program. Most of all for me though - as someone who is not nearly as well-versed on issues of federal food policy as at least half the room - what I really took away from it was the sense that despite his many ties to Big Ag... this guy gets it.


Secretary Vilsack has for some time been patiently sitting on our list of people we'd like to get a copy of PolyCultures to, and I realized that this might be as good a chance as any...

So I slipped my business card into a fresh DVD as he was wrapping up and was going to approach his security detail and see if I might be able to get a moment with him, but by time I got near them it seemed he'd slipped out the back door. I darted out of the conference room looking to see if there was any chance I could see him on the street or something - and sure enough, there he was heading out through the main lobby. I ran down the stairs and across the lobby at a slow sprint - thinking, you know, it's maybe not the best of all possible ideas to run full-speed at a U.S. Cabinet member surrounded by several Secret Service agents. But I did it anyway, knowing that within seconds he would be whisked away in what I now saw was their characteristically governmental black SUV. I came up to one guy who referred me to an aide on the other side of the vehicle Secretary Vilsack had just climbed into. I approached him with my DVD/card and asked him if he would give it to the secretary - he said he'd hand it right to him. I tapped him on the shoulder in appreciation and walked away... stunned at what I'd just succeeded at doing.

Oh, and also I showed the movie yesterday. 25 people came out - which was cool, given that it was during the only on-your-own lunch (key opportunity for most in attendance) and that there wasn't even the subtitle of the film (let alone a graphic or short description) in the conference program. It was the world-premiere of the 56-minute cut, and people seemed to like it. I sold one DVD on the spot to a gentleman who suggested we convey to potential users what sections might be relevant to their interests - already on it, and now it's better prioritized. I think we lined up at least one public screening, possibly planting the seeds for several. And Chris Norman tossed me a softball to pontificate about the sustainability efforts in Cleveland I've seen since my return. It was pretty good.

Well, this is the end of my coverage of this conference at this conference. But I have a long drive home and may well add another post or two as my thoughts on this amazing experience continue to evolve...

Come See FRESH & buy a DVD!

"Tacit Knowledge": Live-Blogging the 13th Annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference - Day 2

I'm deep in the bowels of the conference at this point - and it's pretty damn cool. Since I started working on sustainable food professionally, I've been a part of three special conferences in the Cleveland area: 2008's Northeast Ohio Food Congress, 2008's Open Roads Leadership Summit, and 2009's Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit. Those each brought people from around the country to the table, but this is my first proper national conference. It's international, in fact - with more than a dozen of the 600+ hailing from Canada, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, and Nicaragua - and numerous sessions on global food issues.

It's really invigorating to interact with people from all over the country who I already have two things in common with - our interest in sustainable food and our visitor status in Iowa. It really lowers the barriers to good conversation, and it makes it easy to get to the details of what people do that otherwise I really wouldn't have known about it (with the internet being, in general, an "information junkyard" - to quote another nice piece of rhetoric from this morning's plenary, in addition to the one in the title, which pretty well describes how its tough to convey the essence of this conference). So far I've enjoyed talking with people from Chicago, central Texas, Boston, Northern California, etc. - as well getting to better know the Cleveland-area folks here. Actually one of my favorite interactions was with a Des Moines-based artist who had an exhibit at last night's Garden of Eatin' reception.


Aside from the networking and fringe benefits, I've been charting a course with the break-out sessions that is pretty interesting to me. One looked at how to map the connections between organizations operating in a region that are in many cases working with each other but in some cases not despite that fact that they might really benefit from doing so - computer software as well as cardboard/markets/post-its approaches were discussed in terms of tangible examples happening here in Iowa.


I also went to a fascinating discussion of returning to an approach to life that involves more of a sense of common ownership - of our natural resources as well as many aspects of human-developed capital. Check out onthecommons.org for more on that.


And the food has been great!


Alright, gotta run - time to introduce and screen PolyCultures...

Tom Bullock Potluck & Screening

"In the Belly of the Beast": Live-Blogging the 13th Annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference - Day 1

I'm in Iowa - "the belly of the beast," which two speakers have already called it as this three-day conference gets underway. Iowa produces more corn, more soy, and more hogs than any state in the union - the vast majority grown with "industrial" methods. And yet I'm here with 600 people who are passionate professionals connected to the sustainable food movement... giving us an opportunity to better understand what we're up against and perhaps start more dialog with that monolith, as well as enabling us to see what efforts Iowans are making to return to a state of food self-sufficiency in this wonderful growing climate. It's called "From Commodity to Community: Food Politics and Projects in the Heartland"


Why am I here? Well, I'm not entirely sure yet. Ostensibly, I'm here because PolyCultures is part of the 1st Annual CFSC Film Festival, screening tomorrow during lunch. So I'll be presenting that and leading discussion afterward - and I'm promoting the screening by handing out b-cards customized to this event to everyone I'm able to chat with here:

I'm planning to show our brand-new 56-minute, PBS-oriented cut tomorrow - which will have its Cleveland premiere on October 23rd. It's exciting having that - plus two ~27-minute spin-offs and a new YouTube video on food deserts - to roll out. It's breathing some new life into the ever-evolving project.

I'll be blogging throughout my time here, using this trip-blog as a vehicle to share the many exciting things that been happening with the movie and - as I'm finding here - that are happening in the area of sustainable food.

P.S. Here's a little photojournal of my trip from Ohio to Iowa:

PolyCultures Video Blog 01: New Cuts, People & Obama Nobel

PhotoJournal of Local Food Challenge at Bon Appétit's Market Café in Downtown Cleveland

Dean DeLuciano, my generous host

Screening PolyCultures

The Market's local/sustainable food iniatiatives

My compadres Karl & Patricia setting up their food & flowers produced at Blue Pike Farm in the urban neighborhood of Glenville

Community Connections & Other Recent Happenings

One of the fun things about distributing a community-friendly movie like PolyCultures is periodically scouring the internet to see what kinds of creative ways people are using and benefiting from it. Here are some highlights from what I turned up today:

This evening there'll be a home screening of the movie in conjunction with the Chicago Permaculture Meetup Group. I'm emailing the coordinator of the event in part to ask him if the viewers would be interested in posting some reactions on this very blog post... so check back later this week.

Here's a great guest post on a fine blog Mary Holmes is doing in support of the foods grown and produced in Northeast Ohio called Bounty of the Western Reserve. In the post, Melissa Miller of Miller Livestock shares her experience of our recent amphitheater screening in Warren, OH.

She starts by saying, "It all came together pretty easily. Maybe because it was all so local. Maybe because a group of interested people were committed to making it work. Maybe this will be the beginning of a larger local food movement for our own area."

She continues, "On this evening our goal was to showcase farmers who are working hard to produce food that is raised locally and naturally and bring their products to the attention of a wider audience. Here’s what we served, free of charge before the film screening...."

And in conclusion, "So we made some connections. With other farmers, with chefs, between people we know as our customers and some we hope will become our customers in the future. Connections between people we’ve known for years or those we have recently met who were a part of the Polycultures documentary. Between the people who were present at the Amphitheatre, who are completely new to the local food movement and those who’ve been working in it as their vocation, passion, or profession.... Strengthening connections. Building community. A satisfying, successful evening."

Thanks so much to Melissa for sharing her experience. We're seeing something like this around all of our events, and it's great to have people telling the tales! I really encourage you to read the rest of this well-written, savory story.

PolyCultures was recently featured on the well-known Serious Eats site in the article "Serious Green: Movies That Go Beyond Food Inc." Food Inc. is a great documentary that focuses on the problems of the conventional food production system, and our movie really picks up where it left off - we show the solution in action in a community-integrated fashion. Fittingly, we were included in their "If You Want to See Communities Pulling Together" series. Nice exposure to find out-of-the-blue - thanks Serious Eats!

In other news, Tom's about to kick-off his cross-country tour, so check out the post right below for details on that. On Monday I gave an hour-long talk (with help from some other participants in the local food scene) to about 45 Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) freshmen about the conventional food system and the alternative we present in PolyCultures. It was confirmed last week that John Ruhl, leader of the Institute for Sustainability at CWRU, will be using the movie as a teaching aid in a sustainability course this fall. Our recent screening at Great Lakes Brewing Company went well - intermissions for discussion after plots 2 and 4 worked great, and the herb bundles provided by Christine of Pint Size Farm were fantastic.

As always, if you're interested in setting up a community screening, helping us get PolyCultures in a library near you, or using the movie in some other creative way, please let us know!

Slapping Together the Cross-Country Tour

Two weeks ago it seemed like my little "cross-country tour" might be more of a ridiculous vacation. But wholly crap!

Over the course of the last week, we have been able to schedule screenings in Milwaukee are putting one together in Denver (both will be before the end of the month) and we're working on pulling something together in Michigan and Nebraska (where I may stop between Milwaukee and Colorado and where we have very interested but busy partners) in the very near future.

I know I'm the type to get easily excited about these things, but it seems to me that telling people about the action we have seen occur after an audience has seen the movie is really motivating people to join forces with us, and quickly.

We are working to compile a better list of the actual stuff people have done after being inspired by the movie and here's a quick list off the top of my head-

People who were inspired by PolyCultures have:
1. Driven from Columbus to the Cleveland to build a straw bale greenhouse.
2. Visited Great Lakes Brewing Company's Pint Size farm, in hopes to fund a grant
3. Worked with the City of Cleveland to acquire land on which to farm and build a business
4. Organized a group of friends, family or colleagues to watch the movie
5. Joined a CSA
6. Pushed to get healthier food where they work
7. Started a garden in their own yards

OK, that was without stopping. Please, let me know if you've been inspired to do something as a result of seeing the movie - or if you know someone who is susceptible to theatrical persuasion!